Devil's Promise
by LilPotterfanfic
Summary: When Private Erica Watson is killed transporting Tony Stark through the Afghani desert, Pepper makes him adopt her orphaned daughter. Promises are made and broken, lives are changed, blood is spilled, and ordinary people find that they have the ability to become superheroes. (Spans entire Marvel cinematic universe) (OC/Deadpool) (Multiple OCs) (Spiderman is in this too by the way)
1. Prologue

**Devil's Promise**  
 **Prologue**

Erica Watson is dead.

Callie gets the phone call a late afternoon in July as she's fixing the broken-down pick up truck that belongs to the Hales, the family friends she's staying with while her mom is overseas. It's hot and dusty, just like it always is in Spade, Texas (although it's not hot in winter just bitingly cold and dusty), and Callie is sweating in her tank top and shorts and covered in grease and already irritated so she snaps a "Can I help you?" when Mrs. Hale hands her the land line, watery eyes even more watery than they usually are for some reason.

"Miss Calliope Watson?"

Callie doesn't bother to tell the apathetic voice what her preferred name is and instead says, "Speaking", and taps her favorite wrench against her thigh impatiently.

"We regret to inform you," the voice continues, "that your mother, Private Erica Watson, was killed in the line of duty yesterday during a transport mission with a convoy of her fellow soldiers-"

Callie drops the phone.

The voice doesn't realize that she's dropped the phone and keeps talking about how Private Erica Watson was a hero who died protecting her country and how there will be a memorial service in a week to honor her and the others who died during the attack. What the voice can't see is the way Callie's chest heaves up and down painfully and she curves in on herself like someone has stabbed her in the stomach. What the voice doesn't hear is her anguished scream and the gut-wrenching (but dry) sobs that take the place of the tears that refuse to fall. What the voice doesn't realize is that Callie is filled with hate and despair and shock and guilt- and Mrs. Hale reaches out to her, crying the tears that Callie can't seem muster up, and Callie pushes her away, chucks her wrench at the door of the broken pick-up truck (it leaves a dent. She isn't the one who fixes it later), and runs.

When Callie comes back, she and the Hales mourn together. The next morning they get a phone call informing them that Callie is now an orphan and will be moved to a foster home almost two hours away from Spade. A week later, Callie's bags are packed and she is driven to a crowded house run by a nice-enough couple who are already distracted by the seemingly hundreds of children they have taken in for the time being and don't have time to pay any mind to the silent seventeen-year-old prodigy who is shrinking in and in and in on herself.


	2. You Give Mechanics a Bad Name

**Devil's Promise**  
 **Chapter 1: You Give Mechanics a Bad Name**

When Pepper tells Tony the new plan, he isn't happy.

"A daughter, Pepper?" he demands, running hands through his sweat-soaked hair. "I can barely take care of myself! What makes you think I can take care of a teenage girl?"

Pepper sets her lips into a thin line and glares at him. "You're going to have to learn," she tells him, "because as of today, you are the legal guardian of Calliope Watson."

And one week later, Tony is forced out of his lab and away from his drafting board as a tall, gangly girl with a mane of unruly, sand-colored curls is lead into the house and introduced to him.

His eyes rest on her for a solid two minutes, and he forces an awkward grin as he takes her in and wonders how the hell he's going to do this. The blonde girl raises an eyebrow, no expression on her face, and for the first time, Tony notices the folded-up flag she's clutching to her chest and the wrench sticking out of the back pocket of her shorts.

"So," Tony finally says, tugging on the hem of the shirt Pepper made him change into, "you're Calliope Watson- Erica's daughter."

Her lips are set into a thin line, and Tony knows that they're both remembering the same woman- a little plump but with a kind face, laughing at him as she steers a tanker through the Afghani desert.

"It's Callie," she corrects, smiling weakly. "Calliope makes me sound like I'm in my seventies."

Tony nods. "Right. Callie. Well!" He grins slightly and turns to Pepper. "You mind picking up a pizza? Thanks. I'm starved. Kid, walk with me."

He says all of this so fast that Callie is a little affronted, but Pepper is used to this so just huffs through her nose, waves at Callie, and leaves through the chrome front doors. Stark has already disappeared into what she assumes is the living room by the time Callie realizes he's asked her to follow him. She sets her mother's flag down on the entrance table and walks into the room, hands stuffed into the back pockets of her shorts and squeezing her wrench.

"Coffee?" Stark asks, not turning to her as he starts up a Keurig.

Callie shakes her head and rocks back on the heels of her sneakers. "I don't drink coffee."

Stark, making an honest expression for the first time since she walked through the door, whirls around and raises an overly-hairy eyebrow at her. "What?" he demands. "You don't drink coff- are you even human?"

"Caffeine makes me sick," Callie tells him, a little defensively.

Stark shrugs and turns back to the espresso machine. "Suit yourself."

There's a thick silence as the machine whirs and shoots out a line of caffeine. They stare at each other, sizing each other up, and Stark is the first one to look away. He saunters over to the L-shaped couch, takes a long slurp from his porcelain mug, and pats the cushion beside him. "Pop a squat, kid."

Callie slowly takes a seat and hugs a throw pillow to her chest. They stare at each other again.

"So," Stark begins, "I hate to start off like this, but I need to lay down the law."

"Shoot," Callie tells him, tugging on a dirty blonde curl.

Stark nods and sets down his coffee cup. "You start at Harvard-Westlake School tomorrow morning."

"I know," Callie says. "Pepper told me when she picked me up from the airport."

"Right, well..." Stark tugs on his shirt again. "Rule number one"- he nods at the glass wine rack in the corner- "don't touch my private selection. Rule number two"- he points at the metal door beside the flat screen- "don't go into my workshop. And rule number three, don't go into my room. I don't want you to be scarred for the rest of your life."

Callie shudders a little at the mental images- she has a pretty good idea of what Stark might be doing that will scar her- and nods. "Alright, then," she says, and neither of them are really sure what to do after that, so Stark heads back down to his workshop, and after a few minutes of sitting there and doing nothing, Callie decides to go check out her room.

It's quite nice, with an ultra-plush California king bed and french doors that open out onto Stark's private stretch of beach. A little bare, maybe, but Callie imagines that once her pictures and clothes have been delivered it will feel more like home- well, as much of a home as this place will _ever_ feel like.

And for the first time in a month, Callie feels that tight clenching in her throat and wishes- _begs_ to cry. But she can't. She hasn't been able to since the phone call. So instead, she curls herself around her mother's flag and stares out at the setting sun over the ocean, wishing she were anywhere but here.

* * *

Pepper returns that evening with three cardboard boxes of pizza and a man who introduces himself as Obadiah Stane- Stark's close family friend and business partner. Callie just smiles, nods, tells him her name, and grabs a slice of pepperoni pizza. She isn't in the mood for small talk.

"He does that a lot," Pepper says after Callie tells her Stark is in his workshop. "Don't worry, sweetie. Tony's just a bit of a workaholic."

"If you say so," Callie says, and takes another bite of pizza. It's the really good kind: not to greasy, not to dry, and the crust isn't burnt.

"So," Pepper tries again, not touching her own slice, "are you excited for school tomorrow?"

"Um..." Callie nods, swallows, and smiles slightly. "I guess. I, um, I think I'm trying out for the cheer squad."

Obadiah groans suddenly and tosses his cell phone away from him, rubbing at his temples in annoyance. "That was the company board," he tells Pepper, noticing her raised eyebrow. "They're going through with the suspension."

Pepper looks disheartened, and Callie asks, confused, "Uh, suspension? What- what suspension?"

Obadiah glances up at her and smiles weakly. "Nothing you need to worry about, Calliope."

"It's Callie," she informs him with a frown. "Is this about that thing that's been in the news all week? About Stark Industries not manufacturing weapons anymore?"

"We're handling it," Obadiah informs her in a clipped voice. Callie gets the feeling this isn't something he wants to talk about with her.

The door that leads to the staircase down to the basement opens suddenly, and Stark himself comes sauntering out, covered in sweat but with a proud smile on his face. "Obadiah!" he calls happily. "You brought pizza!"

"Actually, that was Pepper," Obadiah says grimly, getting to his feet. "I brought bad news."

"How bad?" Stark asks in a quieter voice.

Obadiah sends a pointed look in Callie's direction, whose mouth is currently full. She stares back at him in confusion before finally getting the idea. "Oh," she says, swallowing down the pizza so fast she nearly chokes. "You want me to leave-?"

"No. No, stay," Stark says, not looking at her. "You'll find out anyway on the news. Obadiah, what's happened?"

With one last annoyed glance at Callie, Obadiah sighs and says, "I just got off the phone with the company board."

"And...?" Stark asks pointedly.

"And they're suspending you from your duties as CEO," Obadiah finally admits. "They claim you're suffering from PTSD and not in the right mind to be making executive decisions. I'm sorry, Tony."

"What?" Stark demands indignantly. "They can't just suspend me! It's my company- I _own_ it. And if I want to stop manufacturing weapons, then I very well can!"

"Actually," Pepper speaks up, "the company board owns sixty-percent of Stark Industries' funds, as well as major shares in its stock."

"They can't do it though!" Stark insists.

"But they can," Pepper tells him apologetically.

He scowls moodily and rakes his hands through his hair. "You know what?" he finally says. "I'm going back down to the lab. Handle this, Obadiah."

"No, no, no," Obadiah calls before Stark can escape back to his workshop. "Tony, think rationally. We're a weapons company. We can't just stop making weapons... Maybe you need to let this one go."

Stark clenches his jaw. "I'll tell you what," he says, and then grabs the pizza box, "I'm going to take this and go back down to my lab, and you're going to get on the phone and make them revoke my suspension."

And with that, he swipes the last piece of pepperoni off of Callie's plate, causing her to glare up at him and say, "I was eating that."

And for the first time, Stark gives her an honest smile, winks, and says, "You snooze you lose, kid," before turning to back to Obadiah. "I'm working on something new," he says. "It's going to be incredible- change the world. But I need you to get the board to revoke the suspension."

Obadiah stares at him for a few seconds, expression steady, before finally sighing and letting his suited-shoulders slump. "Alright," he relents, but before Stark can skip away into the sunset, Obadiah snatches the pizza box out of his hands and says, "but I'm taking this."

Stark smiles good-naturedly and heads off, and that's the last Callie sees of him all night.

* * *

Quite a few hours later, it's two seventeen in the morning and Callie can't sleep.

It's not like this is anything new to her. She's used to long nights staring at her bedroom ceiling- she's always been a bit of insomniac, but it's gotten so much worse in the two years since her mother signed up for the army, and even worse since the phone call.

It's the not knowing, Callie muses as she yanks the fluffy white comforter up to her chin and buries herself in it. It's not so much that she can't stand the way it happened- it's that she doesn't _know_ how it happened. And she isn't sure if she wants to, because, if she's keeping herself up imagining all the possible ways it went down, how will it be once she actually knows?

Because she could always ask Stark- not that she's planning on it, but she _could_ , if she wanted to. He was there. He _saw_.

Callie groans and presses a pillow to her face, wondering how hard it would be to just suffocate herself and put herself out of her misery. When that doesn't work, she huffs and tosses the pillow across the room. The way she sees it, she only has four more hours before it's reasonable for her to get up and start getting ready for school.

Which is another thing for her to obsess over.

School.

Not just any school- no, Callie has a distinct feeling that this won't be anything like her trusty dusty public school back in Spade, where everyone grew up together and Mike Dawson throws a party every Saturday night that everyone is invited to and Callie's cheer squad has a sleepover once a month where they tp houses and have pillow fights.

According to Pepper, Harvard-Westlake is the most prestigious private school in the LA metropolitan area, and if the uniform is anything to go by, Callie has the feeling it's going to be rather preppy.

Not that she has a problem with that. If she had stayed at her old school she would have graduated as her class's valedictorian- and she's a cheerleader, after all, so it isn't like she's some punk weirdo who the rich society kids will want to burn at the stake.

No, Callie considers herself to be a very classy girl- car-fixing and computer hacking aside- and she manages to convince herself that, with a little bit of work, she shouldn't have too much trouble making friends.

And yet, she still can't get herself to fall asleep.

Callie sighs again and glances at the clock.

 _2:34_

Dammit.

"Is there anything the matter, Miss Watson?" a British man's voice says from the speaker built into Callie's nightstand.

She hides her wince in her pillow, remembering just how weirded out she was when Stark introduced her to the A.I. earlier that day- or, really, _yesterday_ \- and calls back, "I'm fine. Thanks, Jarvis... Just can't sleep."

"Might I suggest a snack?" Jarvis asks. "I find it helps Mr. Stark with his insomnia."

Not wanting to be rude, even though she can't even think of eating right now without feeling ill, Callie nods and sits up in bed. "I think I might just do that, actually. Thanks."

So she slides out of bed, wincing when her bare feet meet the cold wooden floor, and pulls on her favorite pair of socks: knitted, orange, red and blue, her Aunt Barbara gave them two her the last Christmas before she succumbed to the cancer tearing at her frail lungs. The bedroom door slides open and Callie pads through the hall and down the stairs, through the entrance hall and into the all-chrome-appliances kitchen. She finds herself glad that the house's floor plan is relatively simple. She has a terrible sense of direction, and if there were just one more flight of stairs or one more long, dark hallway, she probably would be hopelessly lost.

"Nice socks," a voice from near the pantry pipes up as Callie slips through the door, causing her to shriek and slide around across the tile floor.

The same voice chuckles gruffly and switches a light on, revealing her guardian, and Callie scowls, slapping a hand over her pounding heart.

"Jesus, Stark," she complains. "You almost gave me a panic attack! I-" Her eyes widen as she realizes he's clad in nothing but a pair of boxers. "Why aren't you wearing a shirt?"

Stark shrugs and opens one of the two, glass-front refrigerators, pulling out eggs, a carton of milk, and a huge chunk of cheddar cheese. "My house, my rules," he tells her cryptically. "More importantly, why are you awake at two-" he checks the time on the industrial-sized oven- "almost three, in the morning? You start school tomorrow."

"I know," Callie mumbles, taking a seat on the bar stool Stark nods to. "I, um..." She crosses her arms over her chest. "I'm just having trouble sleeping."

Stark gives her this long, unreadable look. "Me too," is all he says, but Callie feels like he understands, and she's grateful.

Her eyes fixate on the glowing plate of metal in his bare chest as he turns around and starts cooking something over the stove, and it's not until he turns around again to grab the cheese that he notices her staring and raises an eyebrow.

"What is that thing, anyway?" Callie asks quietly, for lack of anything better to say.

"You know what an arc reactor is, kid?" Stark replies, turning back around and shredding cheese over the pan he's set over the open flame.

"Um, yes?"

"Well, you're looking at one."

"Okay, cool. Why is it embedded in your chest?"

Stark sighs deeply and turns back to look at her with this expression like _does it hurt to be that stupid_. "It's keeping missile shrapnel from entering my heart," he tells her impatiently. "A... friend created the original for me when we were... well, I created this one"- he taps the disc- "and without it, I'd die."

"Oh," Callie says. She's quiet for a few minutes, and Tony begins to think that maybe she won't talk again as he sets down the omelet he's made and hands her a fork, but then, as they both begin to eat: "Um, did- did you see..."

She trails off, but Tony knows what she's trying to ask, sees it in the way she stares at the plate, not touching the omelet, just trailing the tines of her fork around the edge, so he finishes for her, "Did I see how your mom died?"

Callie nods, still staring at the plate, and Tony remembers how he felt after the car crash and understands how strange this all must be to her- he was twenty-one by the time his parents died, and already helping to run the company. But this kid isn't even eighteen yet, and probably has no idea how to handle loss like this...

"She was shot through the heart," he finally tells her, and Callie's head snaps up so quickly he's surprised she didn't get whiplash. "It was simple- painless. She died protecting me, and I'm so, so sorry..."

They stare at each other. Callie doesn't say she forgives him, and Tony doesn't really want her to. Finally, she nods and starts eating, and he guesses that's all he's going to get out of her for now.

But, he muses later, once both of them have made their way back to their own beds, maybe that's enough to start with.


	3. Closet Superhero

**Devil's Promise**  
 **Chapter 2: Closet Superhero**

It takes a while, but slowly, Stark becomes more than a distant billionaire that she has to live with, and Callie becomes more than a gangly little girl that he's forced to take care of.

 _("What are you wearing?"_

 _Callie pauses at the top of the stairs on the first day of school and stares down at her uniform: white button down, black tie, burgundy skirt and socks, and then asks, "What's wrong with my outfit?"_

 _"You look like a schoolgirl," Stark informs her, a slightly-troubled expression on a face that hasn't had enough sleep._

 _"I_ am _a school girl.")_

They develop a kind of routine: Stark resurfaces from the workshop around the time that Callie gets back to the house from school, they talk about their day, Callie goes upstairs to change, and they either go out to eat or Pepper comes over with food and a stack of papers for Stark to read, sometimes with Obadiah in tow.

Later, if Pepper leaves early or doesn't come at all, they talk more- about their old lives, before Afghanistan; when Stark went jet-setting all over the globe (and he enjoys the way Callie's previously-dull brown eyes light up when he talks about all the places he's been and the things he's seen and tasted and heard and the languages he's learned), and Callie and her mom were thicker than thieves (and she appreciates the warmth that he gives off that makes her feel comfortable when she talks about how her dad left when she was two and her mom's ugly sweaters, and the laughs he lets out when she talks about initiation into the cheer squad and trying to fix cars and her one and only boyfriend, Doug, and the awkward kisses when his glasses would cut into the bridge of her nose, resulting in the white scar running across the width of it).

Later, if Obadiah stays, he talks Stark and Pepper through all of the ups and downs of his attempts to get Stark reinstated as CEO into the early, _early_ hours of the morning, and Callie tries to listen but isn't a business genius like they are and eventually falls asleep to the muted, soothing sounds of their voices. Sometimes, Stark will notice before Obadiah and Pepper leave and will put a pause to the conversation, summon DUM-E from the lab and have him wake Callie up and guide her to her bedroom. If he doesn't notice, he does once they leave, and he wakes her up himself or falls asleep on the couch across from her.

Neither of them are really sure how this routine starts. Looking back on it, years later, when she wakes up in the dark Avengers Tower and he's there on the couch across from her, like always when she wakes up like this, Callie can't remember. But Tony, when she wakes him up and forces him back to his and Pepper's apartment in the tower, will remember that second night he was her father for, when she came home from school and he had been out of the lab for the first time in weeks, and he awkwardly asked how school was, and she told him, and they were both hungry, so she changed and he drove them to a shitty Japanese restaurant down the street, and they were both so sick the next morning from bad tuna that she didn't go to school, he never made it down to the lab, and they spent the day alternating between watching _Star Wars_ together and puking their guts up.

* * *

Two weeks pass, and Callie finds out about the suit when she gets back to the house from cheer tryouts and realizes that Stark isn't there.

You see, he knew she wouldn't be home until seven or so- she's been talking about making the cheer squad for the past week- and figured now would be the perfect time to take the suit out for a test drive because he doesn't want her getting mixed up in it and also isn't totally sure how to explain it because as far as she knows he's just trying to create a high tech robotic prosthesis- and he's surprised she even knows what a prosthesis _is_ because she's seventeen and blond and a cheerleader- but he didn't take into account how cold it would be at more than one thousand feet in altitude and the suit isn't built to stand up to that and-

 _("Oh my God!" Callie screams down at him from the hole his crash-landing has made in the cement floor of the living room._

 _The suit's face piece slowly retracts with a popping/hissing sound and Stark's elated features are revealed. "Yes!" he cheers. "It flies! Up top." And the robotic arm on DUM-E reaches over and slaps his extended hand._

 _"What the hell is that thing, Stark?" Callie finds herself bellowing down at him, rubble from the ceiling and the floor clinging to her white sweater, scrapes on her knees from skidding along when she dove out of the way of the suit._

 _Tony stares up at her for a minute, wondering why she's home early and whether she's made the team or not. And then he leans back with a groan. "Aw, shit."_

 _Because now she knows. And now he's going to have to explain. And now she's going to become involved in this, and she might get hurt, and he really doesn't want that to happen but he's starting to care about her which wasn't_ supposed _to happen and he doesn't know if he likes that or not._

 _"Oh no!" Callie yells, officially in hysterics. "Oh- Oh_ hell _no, Stark! No, no, no! Tell me what's going on!"_

 _"Shit," Stark says again. He moans loudly and gets to his feet. The suit whines, strains, as he moves, and another piece of it pops out and clatters to the floor. "Alright," he finally says. "Alright, alright. Get down here, kid. JARVIS, let her in.")_

* * *

Another week goes by, and Callie makes new friends.

First there's Audrey Fredrickson, Callie's new cheer captain, with long brown hair and green eyes who Callie says is kind of like a drill sergeant and Tony believes because the first time she comes over to the house they're working on a Computer Science project together and Audrey barks out orders like G.I. Joe.

Then Ellie and Hannah, also on the cheersquad, Ellie sweet and shy with short blonde hair and a powdery complexion, and Hannah, feisty and abrasive, dark and gorgeous, all long legs and sparkling white teeth.

Tony isn't a fan of Landon Thomas the first time he comes over, because a) he and Callie are working on an English essay together, and Tony remembers the last time he wrote an essay with a girl and a lot more was exchanged than just library books and phone numbers. Also, b), he's the wide receiver for the football team and c), he keeps _staring at Callie's chest._

Wesley Price, the other member of the essay team, is okay, mostly because he seems more concerned with his grades than how pretty his partner is, and also because he can't stop staring at his girlfriend, Meg, when she comes over and hangs out with the three of them a few days later.

When Callie isn't spending time with her newfound friends or her homework or just talking with Stark about the world in general, she's pestering him for details about the suit- details that he isn't really chomping at the bit to give out. (For reasons, see the weird feeling in his throat when he thinks about her getting hurt because of it or that nightmare he has one night when the Ten Rings somehow get a hold of her on his watch.) But he lets her contribute to the little things- like installing a waste disposal system for longer flights and a stereo if he gets bored on those longer flights.

 _("Try red," Callie suggests late one night after they get home from eating queso at the nearby Mexican restaurant, staring at the blueprint of the suit on Stark's laptop over his shoulder as he sits on the couch and she comes down from her shower. "Red is a nice color."_

 _"I thought pink was your favorite," Stark comments carelessly, considering the chest propulsor that he wants to install. "And besides, red is a bit... gaudy, don't you think?"_

 _Callie adopts a slight smirk that resembles his a bit as she towels off her hair. "Are you saying that you're not gaudy?"_

 _Stark stares at her for a moment and then grins. "Red it is, then.")_

* * *

Another week goes by, Callie starts calling him Tony, and even though it doesn't seem like much, it is. Because now he actually has a name, which makes him an actual person who actually _matters_ to her, and Callie accepts the fact that things are definitely not as bad as she thought they could be, and that maybe, with time, they might just become something great.

* * *

It's Saturday night and Callie is trying to get her homework done early as she sits cross-legged on the plush, white, sheep's wool rug in the living room. Tony, taking a break from the lab for the first time that day, is perched on the couch behind her, alternating between munching on a banana, watching the news, and solving Callie's PreCalc equations over her shoulder.

From the flat-screen, a gorgeous, buxom redhead chirps, "As more and more of California's elite appear on the scene, it's clear that Stark Industries' charity event for Santa Monica firemen is sure to be a success!" and Tony is a little taken aback because, a) this party is being thrown in his name, and b), he didn't even know it was _happening._

Callie looks up from her worksheet when she hears the name "Stark", and turns to him, frown tugging at the corners of her mouth, and says, "Um, shouldn't you be going to that?"

"Yeah," Tony says, disgruntled, noting somewhere that the party is being thrown at Obadiah's sprawling, split-level ranch house. "You'd think so. JARVIS, did we get an invite?"

"It doesn't appear so, sir," the AI's voice replies apologetically, and Tony and Callie both kind of suspect that he knew about it before they did.

"It's unclear whether Tony Stark will be making an appearance tonight," the reporter continues as they stare at her, "but we're all hoping to see him again for the first time since his return from captivity in Afghanistan."

Tony hesitates, stares at the screen for another moment, then turns to Callie with a jaunty (and slightly insulted) look in his eyes. "Kid," he begins, "feel up to a little party?"

He doesn't wait for her to answer and jumps to his feet, already striding upstairs, probably to take a shower and change into something more presentable than the sweat-stained wife beater and jeans he's been wearing for the past few days. Callie stares after him a moment, then realizes that he's expecting her to actually _go_ with him, and scurries to her bedroom to find something to wear and begin the arduous task of straightening her dark blond curls.

She eventually slips into last year's homecoming dress (coral-colored, tight bodice with chiffon on the sides, silvery embellishments) and her go-to heels for parties back home, before running a hand through her newly-sleek hair and tottering downstairs where Tony is waiting, looking dashingly handsome for once in a black tuxedo, the glow from his arc reactor nearly invisible beneath his button-down and coat.

In fact, Callie muses when he whistles jokingly and tells her she cleans up nice, he almost looks like the man who skipped the Apogee Awards and always made an appearance on her television set- the man he was before Afghanistan.

* * *

The party is weird; not just because reporters scream at her when she gets out of the car with Tony or because he abandons her to sweep Pepper off of her feet or even because he drags her out barely an hour later after a strained conversation with Obadiah- It's weird because Callie is used to bonfires and tailgates and warm beers with giggling team mates, not... whatever _this_ is. This is red carpets and designer dresses and waiters with trays of olives dipped in vinaigrette. This is bar tenders and jazz bands and men with slicked back hair and bright white teeth. This is the silk camisole to Callie's comfy old t-shirt, and she isn't sure if she's ready to trade up quite yet.

But none of that matters once they've left the party and are speeding down the highway on their way back to the house because Tony isn't answering her questions and she's starting to get really, _really_ concerned-

She asks him what's happened, and he says that he isn't sure he wants her getting mixed up in it. But no- _No_. He isn't allowed to do this! He isn't allowed to just tug Callie into this whole mess with the suit and the terrorists and the company and the late nights together and the smiles and his _life_ , and then just kick her out again like she's not important, because she knows and he knows and maybe they don't admit it, but they _are_ important. She's somehow become important to him, and he's somehow become important to her, and the world just might explode because of it.

"What's going on, Tony?" she demands, harsher this time, because he is _going_ to tell her.

He sighs heavily and presses down hard on the accelerator, making Callie clutch at her seat belt so hard her knuckles turn white. "Obadiah just told me something real interesting, kid," he says. "Apparently Stark Industries hasn't been playing by the rules lately- we've been selling weapons to terrorists under the table."

She tenses up at that, stomach roiling, and shoots a sideways glance at Tony, whose hands are squeezing the steering wheel so tight that the leather is bursting at the seems. His jaw is clenched, and Callie knows that, if he had the chance, he would kill Obadiah right now without a second thought.

But then again, so would she.

"So what are we going to do about it?" Callie asks, squaring her bare, freckled shoulders in determination.

"I'm sorry," Tony says quickly, not even looking at her, and she's really wondering why he's still wearing sunglasses when it's one in the morning, " _we_? Um, no. There is no _we_ , kid. There is only _me_. _You_ are not getting involved in this."

"Please-"

"No!" He jerks a hard left and zips them down the highway that will take them to LA. "And that's final. Hate to break it to you, kid, but this isn't a democracy. It's a dictatorship, and I'm Hitler. And Hitler says that you're not getting involved in this. You're going to go home, go to bed, and do... whatever the hell it is that teenage girls do while I figure this out."

Callie wants to argue, she really does, because if Tony is going after the people who are responsible for her mother's death (even if some small part of her still actually blames _Tony_ for that) then she thinks she has every right to be a part of it. They may have tortured Tony, but the Ten Rings have also taken the only person that Callie's ever really, truly loved from her, and in her opinion, that's a hell of a lot worse.

"Let me help, then," she tries again. " _Please,_ Tony!"

He stares out steadily at the dark highway before them. "No, Callie."

She tries to hold it back, she really does, but it comes out anyway without her meaning to. "They killed my mother, Tony! They killed the one person I had left in my family- just took her away like she didn't even matter, like she was just a statistic, just a number. And you think I can just... just sit back and let you get revenge on them yourself? No! No, I can't- I _won't_ -"

Callie's voice breaks, and she finds herself crying the tears that have been waiting for the past three months.

Because Erica Watson is dead. _Mom_ is dead.

And she's not coming back.

"Oh God, kid," Tony begins, watching her uncomfortably. "Shit! Please stop crying. I'm not good with tears-"

The radio lets out a scratchy, bleeping whine then, pulling his attention, thankfully, away from her and leaving her in peace. It was playing the oldies softly in the background, and Tony turns it up with a frown, trying to drown Callie's sobbing out, because he really has no idea how he's expected to comfort her.

"Breaking news from Afghanistan," the DJ's voice cries. "The Ten Rings terrorist group, famous for kidnapping well-known billionaire, Tony Stark of Stark Industries, has called for the complete genocide of the small village of Gulmira, saying that they will go through with their threat unless the local armed forces hand over all weapons manufactured by Stark Industries."

"Son of a bitch." Tony grits his teeth and revs the engine higher. Callie is ripped away from her tears and thrown back against her seat as the car whips along even faster.

"Hey," she tries to call, removing a hand from her seat belt to wipe the water from her eyes. "Tony! Chill!"

"The village is home to almost three-hundred families," the DJ continues. "As we speak, the Ten Rings is rounding up the women and children and ransacking their homes."

The Maserati is speeding along a seaside road, the ocean glittering menacingly straight down the cliff the highway is perched on. When Callie glances at the speedometer, they're pushing 250 mph.

"Stark!" she screams, smacking his tuxedo-clad shoulder. "Slow the fuck down!"

"I'm slowing the fuck down!" he bellows back at her, slamming down hard on the brakes and sending them to a screeching halt.

Callie is thrown forward and only stopped from being launched through the windshield because of the seat belt she's been holding onto so hard. Tony lets out a frustrated, angered growl and throws himself back in his seat. He lashes out a fist and punches the steering wheel, causing the horn to honk so loud it startles Callie. She stares at him for a minute before wiping at the mascara running down her cheeks and switching off the radio.

She stares at him for another long while before repeating, in a much softer voice than before, "What are we going to do?"

* * *

Later, after he's decided to take the suit for a test drive, she will demand he let her help him.

Later, he'll flat out refuse, and they'll have their second fight.

Later, he'll tell her she could get hurt.

Later, she'll ask why he's so worried that she will.

Later, he'll loudly shout, "I _worry_ because I _care_ , Callie!" and both of them will realize that maybe this situation isn't as simple as they thought it would be.


	4. I Am Iron Man

**Devil's Promise**  
 **Chapter 3: I Am Iron Man**

Callie doesn't watch when Tony takes the suit to Afghanistan.

She doesn't watch from the feed he sets up on the TV when he takes off- she's too busy forcing herself to go to sleep.

She doesn't sit there and keep him company on the ten hour flight- she's too busy doing her homework and going to lunch with Ellie and driving Happy crazy with her angsty expressions and comments, especially because he doesn't know why she's making them.

She doesn't see when he saves the lives of a father and his wailing son- she's too busy hiding her face in the throw pillows on the couch.

She doesn't comment when he condemns the leader of the Ten Rings to death- she's too busy wondering if he's the reason why her mother is dead.

She doesn't scream when an air squad fires at him- she's too busy pacing around the kitchen and yanking at her hair.

She doesn't watch- she's too busy wondering how it came to this.

* * *

It's five in the morning by the time Tony gets back, and they don't talk while he orders a pizza (he's figured out what her favorite is by this point: pepperoni and mushroom), and Callie is the one who goes to the door to get it from a very sleepy delivery boy. Tony hasn't bothered to take off the suit yet, and if Callie finds it strange to be eating pizza with a human-sized, bright red, robotic prosthesis as the sun begins to come up, she doesn't let on.

Instead she says this: "You do know this makes you a superhero, right?"

Tony just nods. "I figured as much, kid."

* * *

Pepper isn't happy when Tony tells her about the suit- Callie doesn't blame her. Neither was she, at first, but she has to admit that the idea has grown on her.

She's dead on her feet when Pepper first comes over, and the red haired woman sends her away before launching into a screaming match with Tony. Callie trudges up to her bedroom, listening mutely as the couple downstairs battles back and forth until Pepper finally shouts, "I quit!"

This won't be the end of it though, Callie tells herself as she sheds her sweaty clothes and pulls on pj's. She's known Pepper and Tony for almost a month now, she's certain that it's impossible for them to function without one another: she's seen the way Tony doesn't think before he speaks and the way he stays in his lab for hours on end, forgetting to eat sometimes, and she's seen the way Pepper grows especially uncomfortable without something to do or someone to look out for and the way she latches on to the first person she sees when she walks into a room.

Callie listens again: it's gotten quieter downstairs, and she can just barely hear the muted sounds of their voices, much softer now, but can't quite make out the words. She falls asleep like that, listening to them talk, remembering how her mom would talk with the men she brought home until the small hours of the morning, and when Callie wakes up again, it's nine the next night. She's missed school, and for some odd reason, she doesn't think that she really cares.

There's something in the air that night, and Callie doesn't know what it is, but it feels inherently wrong.

Something is going to happen. Something big and bad, and she's a little scared as she rolls out of bed and drags a hairbrush through her not-quite-red not-quite-blonde hair. She takes her time dressing that night, and as she slips on a lacy camisole, dotted with little yellow and pink flowers, she wonders if she's putting off what's going to come for as long as she possibly can.

Her phone rings the moment she finishes lacing up her sneakers, and she knows that it's started.

"Hello?" Callie says into the speaker; it's a new phone- Tony got it for her a week ago, the first time he saw her use her beat-up Nokia.

"Callie?" Pepper's voice rings out, panicked and high-pitched. "Callie sweetie, can you hear me?"

"Yeah."

"Are you alright? You're not hurt?"

"No," Callie answers immediately. "No, I'm fine- Pepper, what's wrong? Is something happening?"

Pepper breathes out harsh and shaky. "Callie sweetie, I want you to listen to me," she begins carefully, if obviously terrified out of her mind, which, in turn, terrifies Callie out of her mind. (Pepper is the most rational one out of the three of them. If she's scared- God, what isn't she telling her?) "Obadiah hired the terrorists who killed Tony. He wants him dead."

The world stops around Callie.

She knows Obadiah is a bad man; she's known it, inherently, ever since Tony's fateful words in the car three nights ago: " _Stark Industries hasn't been playing by the rules lately, kid_." But if what Pepper is saying is true, then _Obadiah_ is the reason why her mom is gone- not Tony. _Obadiah_ is the reason why Callie will never call Spade, Texas her home again. _Obadiah_ is the reason why she'll never wake up to the smell of pancakes and far-too-strong coffee ever again. _Obadiah_ is the reason why she'll never feel another one of her mom's soft hugs when school just gets to be too much for her and she wants to see the ocean but she's so scared she won't be good enough for Rutgers. _Obadiah_ is the reason why Erica Watson is dead, and _Obadiah_ is the reason why Tony still sometimes wakes Callie up at night when he screams, "Don't hurt him! Please don't kill him! Kill me- he was helping me- _kill me_!"

And now Obadiah is trying to murder Tony- _her Tony_. Because somewhere along the way Stark has become Tony and Tony has become Callie's and she protects the people she cares about, damn it! And hurting him is taking it too far.

"Callie?" Pepper calls, a gentle reminder that she's still on the phone with someone. "Callie sweetie, are you still there?"

She swallows drily. "Yeah, I'm still here."

"Is Tony in the house with you?" Pepper asks frantically. "I tried calling him but we were cut off before he could answer. I'm worried-"

A man's voice says something to Pepper on the other line. She replies, there's a shuffling sound, and the same man's voice says to Callie, "Miss Watson? This is Agent Coulson from S.H.I.E.L.D."

"S.H.I.E.L.D.?" Callie repeats, slightly hysterical at the situation, mostly because she feels entirely helpless and she hates it. "What does that stand for?"

"Now isn't the time, Miss Watson," the agent replies in a clipped voice- something tells her he's probably heard that question one too many times in his career. "We believe Obadiah Stane may have infiltrated the building, in which case you need to-"

"Infiltrated the building? As in _this_ building?" Callie clarifies, her voice rising in pitch to the point where she can barely recognize it as her own.

"Yes, Miss Watson. Please don't panic. Follow my instructions and we'll get you out of there safely-"

"JARVIS?" Callie calls, ignoring Coulson completely. "JARVIS, is Obadiah in the house?"

All that answers is a desperate, staticky whine. Callie winces and covers her ears. JARVIS has been disabled, and only three people have the power to do that: Tony, Pepper, and Obadiah. Callie's money is on Obadiah, which means that yes, he is inside the house.

The real question is: Has he killed Tony yet, or does Callie still have enough time to save him?

"Miss Watson." Coulson sounds wary for the first time. "Don't try anything heroic. The best thing to do right now is get out of that house. Mr. Stark is going to be just fine, but we need you off the property _now_."

Maybe they do; but they're wrong. Tony isn't going to be "just fine". Callie knows that much, at least... Or rather, he isn't going to be "just fine" unless someone does something _right now_ , and the only one who _can_ do anything... Is Callie.

"I'm sorry, Agent Coulson," she says, not really sorry at all, but her mom always taught her to be polite, "but you're wrong. Getting out may be the best thing for me and you, but it's not the best thing for Tony. I know what I have to do."

"Miss Watson?" Coulson is panicked now. "Miss Watson, don't-!"

But it's too late. She's already halfway down the staircase.

* * *

Later, Callie will hide behind the door to the living room as Obadiah gives the worst evil villain speech in the world- mostly because this one is real and all the other ones she's ever seen have been in movies.

Later, Callie will dive under the table in the foyer as Obadiah strolls out of the house, the arc reactor that is Tony's heart in tow.

Later, Callie will be in tears when she finds Tony so close to death, and later, JARVIS will let her into the lab even though she doesn't have the clearance, and she'll start to think that maybe the AI isn't so bad after all.

Later, like the holy grail, the original arc reactor will be sitting on Tony's workbench when Callie needs it most, and she'll use everything she's ever learned about mechanics to somehow reattach it to Tony's heart and save his life.

Later, Rhodie will walk in and Callie will attack him, thinking that Obadiah has sent him to make sure she and Tony are dead, and later Tony will hook himself up to the suit and blast into the night sky with instructions for Callie to take the Maserati and follow after him.

Later, she'll stick the keys in the ignition and start driving, unsure of what she'll find and unsure of what she's feeling.

* * *

By the time Callie makes it to Stark Industries Design Division, the fight is over.

There are firemen and policemen and men in black suits everywhere, and ash and broken pieces of Plexiglas fall over Callie's head like rain. A fire is ravaging the building, and she almost screams when she sees Tony being wheeled out on a gurney, the suit smoking around him. He's unconscious, and she starts to make her way over to him but is stopped by a shorter man in a gray suit.

"Are you Calliope Watson?" he asks.

"It's Callie," she corrects immediately. "And I'm sorry. I don't have time to talk. My da- my _Tony_ _ **-**_ is-"

"I'm Agent Coulson," he says with a cold, calculating, snake-like smile, "and you broke protocol."

* * *

Coulson takes a shocked Callie and a crying Pepper to the S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters in Los Angeles, where they are tended to by medics and separated and interviewed by two resident psychiatrists. Callie's is Doctor Alice Dennet, who's a lot younger than she was expecting and extremely nice. She decides she likes her.

It's a long night. After Callie tells Doctor Dennet everything she knows about the suit and how and why Tony created it, an agent walks her to the lobby where Rhodie is. He gives her a big hug when he sees her and announces that Tony is alive and well and waiting for her at home.

Because it is her home now, Callie realizes as Rhodie drives the two of them back to Santa Monica. She misses Texas and she misses her mom- she always will- but she has Tony now. She has Tony and Pepper and JARVIS and Happy and Rhodie and Dum-E and she's not alone anymore.

They reach the house, and Tony forces his bruised, battered, bleeding body up from the couch to give her a huge hug. If she tears up a little when he does, no one messes it.

Pepper arrives with Happy a few minutes later, and they have a quiet, tired celebration that night with just the five of them: Rhodie ordering pizza and scaring the life out of the poor delivery boy. Pepper lecturing Callie on the importance of following directions and then hugging her softly with tears in her eyes and saying she's glad she's safe. Happy nominating himself as Tony's new head of security and loudly announcing that he's starting reforms on the perimeter of the house before falling fast asleep on the couch. Tony trying to bust out the bottle of scotch he's been saving, much to Pepper's displeasure, but passing out in his arm chair before he can. Callie sitting on the floor and curling around her plate of pizza only to go to sleep before she can even take a bite.

It's a happy moment, all of them sleeping in a messy jumble around the living room, and looking back on it, Callie will wish it could have lasted forever.

* * *

"Callie, your dad is Iron Man!"

It comes from Trent Derringer. He bursts into the Oceanography lab, caramel hair in disarray, and waves the screen of his phone in Callie's shocked face. "He just said so! It's all over the news."

Callie's face goes pale. The classroom erupts in surprised giggles and whispered gossip, and Ellie stares at her from the other side of the table.

"Callie?" Ellie begins tentatively, "is it true?"

"Um…" Callie suddenly feels the weight of everyone's stares on her back and leaps to her feet, grabbing her backpack and hurrying to the door. "I think I need to call Tony."

* * *

"You told everyone!" Callie exclaims as she marches into the living room, Happy having checked her out of school at an insistence from Pepper. "I thought we were supposed to keep it secret!"

"You were," Agent Coulson says from his seat on the couch. His legs are crossed primly and his mouth is set in a thin line. "Mr. Stark _broke protocol_."

Callie shrinks back, because honestly? Agent Coulson kind of terrifies her.

"Protocols were meant to be broken," Tony intones snarkily. He's in his preordained armchair, scowling moodily as Pepper swipes the makeup off of his bruises and cuts with that I'm going to murder you look she has sometimes.

"I don't think you understand what you've gotten yourself into, Mr. Stark." Coulson rises from his seat. "Not only have you endangered yourself, but you've also put Ms. Potts and Ms. Watson at risk. You've just painted a bright red target on your back."

"There's been a target on my back since the day I was born, _Agent_."

There's silence. Coulson and Tony look at each other, staring each other down, and Callie shifts uncomfortably in her shoes, because Coulson is right: Tony has made the choice to be a hero, but does he know what that choice entails? Do any of them know?

Coulson is the one who looks away. His phone buzzes, and when he looks at the screen, his eyes grow wide. He stuffs the phone back in his pocket.

"I'm needed back at H.Q.," he tells them. "Someone will be by to talk national security with you, Mr. Stark. Ms. Watson, ." He nods at Pepper and Callie, adjusts the lapels of his jacket, and in another moment. He's gone.

* * *

"So what happens now?" Callie asks that night.

They're sitting on Tony's private beach, per Callie's request, watching the stars reflect off of the crashing waves and munching on the cartons of sushi they had Happy pick up from the grocery store down the street. In the light of the moon, the bruises fanning across Tony's face are so much more prominent, and the arc reactor reflects off of the scars on Callie's hands, left over from the cuts she sustained smashing the glass encasing the arc reactor.

Tony just shrugs, munching on a piece of sashimi. He swallows and looks over at her. "Well, I'm a superhero now," he jokes lamely. "I might as well start saving the world."

Callie nods and brushes off a grain of rice that was stuck to her lipstick from school. "But I mean, what are we going to do?" And then, realizing that didn't really clear anything up, clarifies: "Like, how do we go back to normal after this?"

"We don't."

And Callie knows what he really means: They can't. There is no going back to before Obadiah and before Iron Man. And even though the scars run deeper than the spangled white marks on their skin, neither of them really want things to go back to normal.

Sometimes fear is a good thing, Callie muses as they watch the ocean. Sometimes it helps you realize what's really important to you.

"I'm glad you adopted me," she says suddenly, without looking at Tony.

"Yeah," he replies. "Yeah, kid. I'm glad I adopted you, too."

* * *

 **A/N: Hope you enjoyed! Please leave a review if you can, and I hope you have a great day.**

 _Next chapter: Tony and Callie have a "daddy-daughter day" in Disneyland, and the return of Callie's birth father may drive them apart forever._


	5. Interlude 1: Sunday

**Devil's Promise  
Interlude 1: Sunday**

* * *

 _ **September 11, 2012  
S.H.I.E.L.D. Base, Unknown location, New York, New York: Case 5782: Super Soldier Initiative: Clearance Level 8**_

* * *

The names and dates and locations are familiar by now. Professor Sunday Kontis pretends to listen anyway as Coulson briefs her in. She knows Fury is watching from the balcony above them as they walk to the Captain's room, and she knows that he knows she isn't really listening. She feels his one eye on the back of her neck and shivers, ducking her head down and flipping through the files in her hands instead: Steve Rogers, Medical Records, HYDRA and the Tesseract, Margaret Carter and the Howling Commandos, and Nurse Katherine Beatty and Private James Barnes.

Standard. Nothing has changed. Sunday's been reading this same file over and over since the Captain's body was unearthed a year ago. She's memorized it by now.

Coulson is twitchier than usual. His hands are held steadily behind his back, and she knows it's so he has easier access to the gun he keeps in the holster on the lapels of his jacket. His eyes sweep up and down the hallway, cataloging every face of every doctor and every psychiatrist and every agent to make sure there's no one here who isn't supposed to be here.

If it's possible, he's even more nervous than Sunday.

"Are you alright, Phil?" she asks softly, because she really is worried about him. He was in California all month and only just got back two days ago, and ever since then he's been muttering under his breath about Iron Man and someone named Callie Watson and "not following protocol" which she knows drives him insane.

He just shakes his head and starts walking faster. "Let's go. The Captain should wake up any minute now."

They finally reach the high-security medical bay, and Coulson and Sunday's faces are scanned before the frosted doors swish open, throwing them into the sound stage and hospital operations center. Coulson is immediately off, calmly shelling out orders and commands to the nervous crew of doctors and security guards. Sunday is flanked by Natasha Romanov and Audrey Laureen, a frightening combination, Audrey checking to make sure the Captain will be fooled into thinking Sunday is from the 1940's, and Natasha checking to make sure Sunday hasn't been bugged and/or brainwashed between now and two hours before now.

Finally, they decide she's ready, but Sunday isn't so sure.

Natasha puts a hand on her shoulder. "It's almost time."

The doors swish open again and Fury strides through, Maria Hill at his heels. He spares Sunday a meaningful second of a glance, the closest he's ever come to acknowledging her existence, before meeting Coulson and their head doctor, Jeffrey Piezar, at the bank of computer screens monitoring the Captain's every heartbeat. The room goes quiet, all of them holding their breath.

Doctor Piezar clears his throat. "He's waking up."

Someone prods Sunday forward- maybe Audrey, maybe Natasha- and she takes a deep breath before approaching the door. Coulson waves a hand, giving her the go ahead. Sunday squares her shoulders and enters the room.

The man watching her from the bed is familiar to her. She's one of three who helped identify him when he was found in the ice. But it's different to be seeing him awake and breathing. There's this steely defensiveness in his eyes and in the set of his sharp, squared jaw. They watch each other for a moment, and Sunday is the first to look away. She switches the radio off.

"Welcome back, Captain America."


	6. Gotham

**Devil's Promise**  
 **Chapter 4: Gotham**

A month after their first crisis, Callie comes downstairs one morning and is very surprised to see Tony awake and waiting for her.

"You're not going to school today, kid," he tells her.

"Um…" She blinks at him. "Why?"

"We're having a daddy-daughter bonding day!"

"Oh my God, don't ever say the word 'daddy' again."

* * *

They go to Disneyland.

Callie is in Mickey Mouse ears, overall shorts, and a striped red tank top, and Tony hides his face with a ridiculous, floppy green Mad Hatter top hat that makes Callie take multiple pictures to show to Pepper later and laugh so hard she almost pees herself.

All jokes aside, Disneyland is really incredible. Callie has never been before, and Tony watches in amusement as she takes the park in with wide eyes, squealing a little when she gets to meet Ariel (her favorite princess, she tells him), and avoiding the bigger roller coasters at all cost.

He learns a lot about her that day; like the fact that her dream is to be an oceanographer. He never knew that before, but Tony can really see Callie being happy doing something like that. He makes a mental note to get her an aquarium for her birthday. Her favorite movie is Finding Nemo, and she's terrified of heights and being jerked around. She gets motion sick, but Tony loves big roller coasters, so they compromise and divide their time between kiddie rides and thrill rides, and it's one of the best days either of them can remember.

 _("Are you sure about this?" Callie asks nervously as a smiling park employee guides her and Tony into the seats at the front of the log ride._

 _Tony rolls his eyes, visible even from beneath his sunglasses, and snuggles himself comfily into his seat. "Where's your sense of adventure, kid?"_

" _On the ground. Where it's supposed to be."_

 _Callie is obviously very nervous, and hesitates before sitting down next to Tony on the edge of the seat, her long legs clumsily stuffed into the log. The bars close over their laps and she grips hers with white knuckles while Tony sweeps off his hat and tucks it under his legs, stretching languidly and resting his head on his arms. The ride starts moving and Callie lets out a scared squeak._

" _This ride is for eight-year-olds," he tells her, amused. "Why are you so scared?"_

 _Callie doesn't answer. They're climbing up the large hill and her eyes are screwed tightly shut, still hanging onto the safety bar for dear life._

 _Suddenly, there's a_ splat _sound, and she cracks an eye open. Tony is sitting next to her, mouth open in shock, with a big splatter of white bird poop slowly dripping from his dark hair over his forehead. Callie laughs so hard, she almost forgets to scream when they drop over the hill._

 _Almost.)_

Pepper isn't even very mad when someone manages to snap a picture of them and their day ends up all over the news. She's too busy smiling at the Winnie the Pooh, giant teddy bear Callie won for Tony at the balloon pop and the pictures of them with Ariel and Gaston and Daffy Duck.

* * *

Callie gets asked to Homecoming.

It's Trent Derringer again; the goofiest, dumbest, cutest boy in the world, and he asks her on a trip to the beach by writing it on the side of a smoothie he buys her. She says yes, even though he doesn't know the difference between the Bathyal Zone and the Benthic Zone, much less what they are, but he's cute and sweet and listens to her talk about AUVs and ROVs and Alvin 49, even if he barely understands a word she says.

Tony isn't very happy, (mostly because he thinks Trent is an idiot) but Pepper tells him in no uncertain terms that his opinion is irrelevant, and resolves to take Callie dress shopping the second she gets a chance.

It's like Disneyland again, only with Pepper (and maybe not quite as fun but Callie refuses to say that much less think it). Erica Watson was never a very girly person, unlike her daughter, and Callie enjoys going shopping with a somewhat-maternal figure, almost as much as she enjoys Pepper's elegant style and helpful hints, especially when she steers Callie away from pink, which clashes with her hair a bit, and helps her pick out a gorgeous, silver and blue dress with a sweet-heart neckline and lots of sparkles.

Tony doesn't approve of how short it is ("She's highlighting her legs, Tony," Pepper says in exasperation when he complains), but then again, what does he know?

So he improvises. The poor school receptionist almost faints when she gets a call from Tony Stark asking if they still need chaperones for the Homecoming dance.

 _("Oh my God," Callie says when Tony leads her and Trent to the car. It's not just any car, though- it's a_ minivan _. A minivan with_ bumper stickers _._ Iron Man bumper stickers _._

 _Tony looks inordinately pleased with himself as he leans against the driver's side door and straightens his tie. "You like? I bought it for the occasion."_

 _"Sweet ride, Mr. S!" Trent says with that goofy smile of his, and Callie tightens her grip around his arm, wanting very badly to take off this dress, run into the ocean that is their backyard, and drown herself._

 _"Never call me Mr. S again. I have people who can make your death look like an accident."_

 _"Sure thing, Mr. S!"_

 _"Oh my God," Callie says again, because at this rate, she might not have a date by the end of the night.)_

* * *

All things considered, the dance isn't as big a disaster as it could have been.

Sure, Tony is an absolutely horrible chaperon (not only does he turn a blind eye to Landon Thomas spiking the punch, he pulls a flask out of his jacket and _helps_ ). Sure, Trent can't dance to save his life (and Callie is going to have bruises on her feet for weeks). And sure, Callie's strapless bra keeps falling down (why does she even need one? She barely fills out an a-cup!). But in all in all, it's a great senior Homecoming, and she's smiling when she and Tony make it back to the house at a solid two in the morning. (The dance ended at eleven but Tony, being the awesome chaperon he is, took the liberty of driving Callie and her friends to the haunted house set up on the Santa Monica pier.)

The first thing Callie does when she walks through the door is chuck her shoes in the corner for DUM-E to collect later and throw her throbbing body onto the couch.

"Want to order a pizza?" Tony asks, discarding his Iron Man print tie in the trash.

"Oh my God, no," Callie moans. "I think I'm going to puke. What did you and Landon put in the punch?"

"Cognac," Tony answers immediately. "I think. You know, that kid's really starting to grow on me. He reminds me of myself at that age."

Callie doesn't dignify that with a response. Instead, she lets her hair down from its high ponytail and rubs a hand through it, ruining what took almost two hours to straighten. It doesn't matter, anyway. The humidity of the dance and the pier and the haunted house turned it back into its usual floppy, beautiful mess.

Tony opens his mouth to speak after a few minutes of silence, but Callie beats him to it. "I'm not dancing with you."

"Why not?" Tony whines with a smirk, because she seems to know him very well by now. "You've been avoiding it all night!"

"Because I _saw_ you dance with Pepper at Obadiah's party!" Callie narrows her eyes accusingly at him. "She didn't wear heels for a _week_ after! And she _never_ wears flats."

Tony rolls his eyes and scoffs. "I'm not _that_ bad."

"You are, too."

"Just one little dance?"

"No!"

But a few minutes later, after silent calculations, Callie will wordlessly stand up and glare at him, and Tony will smile softly, and JARVIS will start humming Mozart in the background while they waltz, tired and dramatic, but grinning, around the living room.

* * *

Things change. Iron Man becomes widely known as the world's policeman, and Pepper and Callie are worried sick because of it. There are a few close calls: like the machine gun at the terrorist attack in Paris, and the bazooka in Israel, and the time in Sudan when a bomb blast knocked him unconscious.

Tony improvises: Force fields and stronger arc reactors and more suits and commands that allow Callie and Pepper to operate remotely in the event that he's incapacitated.

It doesn't make them feel any better about the situation, but the illusion of safety is nice.

The truth is that there is no safety net. If something goes wrong, they have no one to back them up (because Rhodie isn't always just a phone call away), and there is a very real chance that Tony might die, and it keeps Callie up at night more often than not.

They do, of course, correspond with S.H.I.E.L.D. frequently. Coulson drops by about once every two months, and despite her general fear of him, Callie soon develops a sort of friendship with him (although she's not about to fly to New York to have brunch with him, not like Pepper does, anyway). She and Coulson are similar, in their quiet ability to observe and react to a situation and in how quickly they pick up on the little nuances of a person's brain. Coulson appreciates Callie's silent observances and her sarcasm and no-nonsense attitude, and Callie enjoys Coulson's adherence to rules and regulations, even if it does slightly terrify her when he hounds after her and Tony for paperwork.

In fact, Couslon is the one who suggests Tony sign Callie up for self-defense classes, a skill that she never even thought of picking up and isn't exactly very good at once Happy starts teaching her.

It's a good thing she starts learning when she does, they soon discover. Because if she hadn't, she might not have made it out of their next crisis alive.

* * *

It's Thanksgiving break, and Tony, Callie, and Pepper are traveling to Gotham City, Oregon, for Stark Industries' first participation in a Technology Conference in twenty years.

Tony is excited on the plane ride over, practically thrumming in his seat on the private jet, not even paying attention to the boobs on the (admittedly very nice) flight attendant, and Callie is a little impressed. He's really starting to step into this whole "responsible super hero" thing. He hasn't even gotten totally wasted at a business event in three months (aside from that thing with Lex Luthor in Metropolis, and, really, that doesn't even count because she knows how amazingly hard he can be to work with).

The convention is a formal event. Tony wears a jacket and tie, Pepper her usual pantsuit-and-heels ensemble, and Callie a ballet pink sweater with her favorite boots and a black skirt better suited to relatively-warm Novembers in California than the mindbogglingly freezing streets of Gotham. Pepper anticipates this and hands Callie a classy, black wool coat the minute they step off of the plane.

Bruce Wayne and a lanky boy with untidy hair and a perpetual smirk meet them at the airport, and Callie is rather surprised when Tony immediately steps up to the dark, imposing man, and lightly punches his chest in the way boys do to each other sometimes.

"Long time no see, Bruce," Tony says with a smirk. "You've gotten broody-er."

"Tony," Wayne says without flinching. "I'd say I'm happy to see you, but I'd be lying."

Callie blinks. Happy sighs and adjusts his grip on their carry-on bags (honestly, he's so strong it scares her sometimes). Wayne's expression doesn't change. The untidy boy standing behind him snickers softly. Tony grins. Pepper rolls her eyes and takes a step forward, a warm smile on her face. Wayne's lips twitch in what Callie thinks is supposed to be his version of a pleasant emotion.

"Mr. Wayne," Pepper says in her _I'm the one who actually runs this company_ voice. "Thank you so much for inviting us. Stark Industries appreciates it."

Wayne just nods stiffly and turns on his heel, the conversation clearly over. At least that's what Callie thinks, because a few minutes later, after they've left the airport and climbed into a sleek black car, he says, "This is Dick Grayson."

"Just call me Grayson," the untidy boy says with a scornful look on his face. "Dick is a horrible name."

Tony snorts softly and mumbles something like: "No shit, Sherlock", but since Callie is the one sitting next to him only she hears it.

She softly elbows Tony in the gut and says, "I'm Callie Watson."

Wayne just raises an eyebrow at her, but untidy-boy-don't-call-me-Dick Grayson grins. "Adopted or mentored?" he asks.

"Sorry?"

"Adopted or mentored?" Grayson rolled his eyes. "I'm adopted. Parents died in a freak circus accident. But Oliver Queen mentors Valentine Blake, and her parents are still alive. So which one are you?"

"Adopted," Callie answers wryly. Twisty logic. Grayson is using twisty logic. The twisty, insane-person logic Tony uses sometimes. She isn't sure if she likes him or not.

"Glad to know I'm not the only one." Grayson sinks back into his seat. "You, me, and Annie, kid. You, me, and Annie."

"You're like, a year older than me," Callie tells him. "Don't call me 'kid'." She doesn't mention that Tony is the only one allowed to do that, but he nudges her foot with his anyway and she kind of wants to punch someone, preferably Grayson.

"Whatever you say, kid."

* * *

The convention is long and very, very interesting. Callie supposes it helps slightly that Wayne Industries has just made a foray into the world of Oceanography and has new prototypes for Core Samplers and Dredgers on display. Also that Doctor Alex Stuttwell, modern leader of oceanography and head scientist at Rutgers University, is there and practically guarantees her acceptance when she applies in March.

There's this huge smile on her face by the end of the day, even when Wayne begrudgingly invites them to a gala for some charity or other in two days (probably under prompting from Grayson, who has been following Callie around all day and seems to have taken quite the liking to her), and usually this means that she's going to leave Tony in peace for the rest of the day (or let him spend hours in the lab without hounding after him about "being healthy" or something equally as stupid), but not today. No. Today they are in Gotham City on some special day of the moon and the tide pools are at the perfect level and a certain kind of barnacle will be here for a week and Callie is dead set on seeing it.

Unfortunately, after a lot of pleading and puppy dog eyes and sniggering from Grayson, Tony lets her go on the condition that she takes Happy with her.

In the next two days, he will come to regard this as one of the worst decisions he's ever made.

* * *

"Callie?" Happy calls warily as she scampers beneath the Gotham City pier like she's a professional marine biologist rather than a scarily smart kid who's way to curious for her own good. "Maybe we should turn back."

Callie rolls her eyes. The heels of her boots keep sinking into the sand, and Pepper is going to murder her for ruining them, but the tide pools are supposed to be at the very end of the pier and she'll be damned if she leaves Gotham without seeing those barnacles.

"See?" The tide pools are just a few yards away. "We made it without dying."

"You mean we haven't died yet," Happy mutters, and Callie hears him but ignores him, gets on her knees in front of the tide pools and lets out a happy scream when she sees the barnacles clinging to the rocks.

"Oh my God! Look at these! They only ever come out of the Arctic this time of year and that's the only time they come down south _ever_..."

Happy privately thinks that they look like giant crusty boogers, and he can't really understand why Callie is so excited about them, and he certainly doesn't understand why she takes _pictures_ of them on her phone or puts them in a cup filled with ocean water to take back home with her, but he doesn't say anything about it and stands there instead, shifting, uncomfortable wearing a suit on the beach, while Callie rants on about things he doesn't know about and speculates about which fish they traveled this far on.

There are footsteps from behind them. Happy turns just as Callie glances over her shoulder in annoyance.

A gleeful man's voice says, "I don't know. It all sounds a bit _fishy_ to me."

There's a chorus of insane laughter, and sweet smelling gas fills the air. Happy's eyes widen and he reaches for the gun in his back pocket, staring with disbelief at a widely smiling face covered in vampire-white makeup and topped with a mane of incredibly green hair. Before he can even scream, he's unconscious.

* * *

Callie wakes up to a face-full of freezing cold water. She screams a little, spitting it out of her mouth, and opens her eyes to find herself face to face with a grinning woman in a red jester's hat with white clown makeup all over her face. Callie tries to move her arms, only to find that they are chained to whatever kind of metal chair she's sitting in. She can feel something wrapped around her legs and waist, and when she looks up, she sees she's in one of those swing-rides she's always seen at amusement parks but has never been quite brave enough to go on.

"Oh my God, what the hell?"

The clown-woman smiles. "Nice to see you finally awake, sweetheart," she drawls in a thick, Bronx accent. Callie briefly wonders if she's ever been to Rutgers University but then decides that there are more important things at hand: like why she's been tied to a metal death trap.

"Um." Callie hesitates; she's never done this before, but the shock is slowly wearing off and she thinks she might actually puke. "Who are you and where am I?"

"Harley Quinn," clown-lady says with a sugary sweet smile. "Nice to meet ya'."

"Harley dear," that same, insanely happy voice from the beach says from behind her. "Don't hog our guest to yourself. I expect an introduction!"

"Sorry, puddin'!" Harley sticks her wine red bottom lip out in a sick perversion of a pout and turns away, letting Callie see the green-haired, purple-suited super villain that's been on the news more times than she can count.

The Joker.

* * *

A lot of things happen at once. The Joker explains to a strangely calm Callie (the panic attacks will come later, and they will come strong and fast and very often) what his plan is: He wants the suit, and he plans to get it by bribing Tony with Callie's life. They're in the abandoned Gotham amusement park, Happy is very much alive (but for how long, Joker can't say), and the thing Callie is hooked up to is, in fact, a swing ride that will kill her if Tony doesn't show up within the hour.

Callie wants to cry, but she doesn't. The moment one of Joker's goons (and oh my God, he has _goons_ \- Callie thought villains only had those in _movies-_ ) turns the swing ride on, making it lurch sickly as it starts to spin, Iron Man crashes through several roller-coasters, sees her, and is then shot out of the sky via Harley Quinn's bright pink bazooka.

That's when Callie starts screaming.

It's also when Batman and Robin show up.

* * *

"You seem to be in quite the pickle there, Red," the boy she can only assume is Robin says once he's managed to batarang himself onto the swing closest to her.

Callie squeezes her eyes shut and fights back the vomit creeping up her throat. "Shut up and get me the fuck down."

Robin raises an eyebrow from beneath the mask. "Well, aren't you a little ray of sunshine?"

"I'm sorry, excuse me for being irritated when I'm _tied to a swinging death trap_!" The first shudder and snap of metal happens, and some of the rusted chains begin to break, and that's when the first scream escapes. Callie fights it back and takes a deep breath.

The swing begins to break, and Robin is forced to cling to his seat for dear life as Joker ups the ante and the ride spins faster, so fast he can't get to her.

Callie thinks. She _has_ to think. If she doesn't, there is a very real chance that she (and maybe even Tony) will die. This is _different_ from Obadiah. It's different because she's actually been thrown into the path of danger this time. Sure, she was willing to be in danger with Obadiah, but she never confronted him- not directly. All she did was rewire an arc reactor and smash a glass box with her bare hands. This time she is face to face with the villain, and even though she is terrified out of her mind, and even though the Joker has turned her into property, _Tony's property_ , she doesn't mind, because at least this time she gets to decide what's happening to her.

And she decides that she is going to live.

So while Robin is hanging onto his seat, trying to figure out a way to get both of them out of this, Callie forces her eyes open (and she wants to scream because they are _very high in the air right now oh my God-_ ) and leans her head down to her where her arm is handcuffed, pulls one of the pins out of her hair, transfers it to her mouth, and starts picking the lock with her teeth.

Because God dammit, she is a oceanographic-engineer-in-training-applicant and she knows how to pick a fucking lock.

It snaps open, and she finds a bit of satisfaction in the shock on Robin's face when she leans over, picks the lock on her right hand, and screams at him, "Can you get this harness off of me?"

He nods, and swings her way, and she reaches out one of her newly-freed hands and grabs onto him just as the chains on his seat snaps and it plummets to the ground. Hers is next, and they need to work quickly. Robin pulls a glowing red button out of his belt (and Callie's trying to ignore the fact that he's currently straddling her and also wearing spandex) and attaches it to the metal harness around her waist. It explodes with a small bang and the harness comes unattached, and Callie is freed.

Robin doesn't hesitate. He grabs Callie, uses the batarang to hook onto the nearest roller coaster, and gets them the hell out of there just as the chains give away.

Callie is too busy screaming to notice.

* * *

Batman and Iron Man fight the Joker together, and Robin goes for Harley Quinn, which means it's up to Callie to get Happy down from where he's tied to a tent post, and also try to stay alive while the Joker's goons come at her with everything they've got.

This is where the self-defense training with Happy comes in handy. She knows how to throw a punch, dodge, knee someone in the crotch, and hit someone over the head with a wrench. It's enough to keep her alive long enough for the others to take out Harley and the Joker, and it's enough for her to still be standing when Tony strides over to her and gives her a giant hug, her only injuries being her broken nose (one of the goons landed quite a few punches before she kicked him) and her chafed wrists.

"Never again," Tony mutters into her hair. "You are never going to be in a situation like this ever again."

If only he was telling the truth.

* * *

They try to pretend that things are normal after this. Tony attends the last day of the conference while Pepper sits with Callie in the hospital as her nose is casted and Happy stands guard. That night Callie still picks out a dress from the assortment Oscar DeLarenta and Zac Posen have sent (Callie has become something of a fashion icon since the press first took notice of her back in September), and they all still attend Bruce Wayne's gala on the last night of their trip to Gotham.

But nothing is the same. Tony is panicking. He thought Callie was _safe_. She's supposed to be _safe_. And he knows that maybe it's wishful thinking (Coulson told him she was at risk from the beginning, after all) but he thought that since most of his targets are overseas, Callie is relatively untouchable. It should have occurred to him that someone state-side might use her to attack him.

He keeps a careful eye on her at the gala, but she seems normal, aside from the plaster on her nose. If anything, she's downright _pleasant_.

This isn't true. She's panicking.

Because oh my God. Just- _oh my God_. She was a damsel in distress, and there is a very real chance that it may happen again someday. Iron Man has become much more real now that she's involved in it, and they can't pretend to have a somewhat-"normal" relationship anymore. They can't hide from the fact that if Tony dies, Callie will be left alone, again. And they can't hide from the fact that if Callie dies and it's his fault, Tony will hate himself for the rest of his life.

She pushes it to the back of her mind. The press will have a field day if the mental breakdown happens at a Wayne Enterprises gala. For now, she's in an Oscar DeLarenta tiered, gray and blue and pink dress with lots of tulle that highlights her long, long legs, and she feels like a princess.

Grayson sees her from across the room (or more precisely, her empty champagne glass) and walks over, looking a little less smudgy and untidy (and very uncomfortable) in an Armani tuxedo.

"You look lonely," Grayson comments. "And bored. I have the cure."

He produces a bottle of champagne from somewhere in that designer suit of his, and Callie stares at him for a moment. She remembers Robin pulling a miniature explosive from his tool belt, and slowly, smiles. She holds her glass out and he fills it for her.

"You know," she says softly. "I would have thought super heroes would be against distributing alcohol to minors." And she smiles at his shocked face. "Isn't that right, _Robin?_ "

And as she struts away, gorgeous dress flouncing along behind her, she smirks so widely Tony would be proud, and takes a big gulp of fizz, draining her glass in one swallow. Because she and Tony are going to need a lot of drinks if they're going to get through Iron Man together.

* * *

 **A/N: I know this chapter came very soon, but I've been looking forward to writing it for a while. Leave a comment below and tell me what you thought! Thanks for reading!**


	7. Time Spent

**Devil's Promise  
Chapter 5: Time Spent**

Christmas with Tony is a quiet affair.

He isn't as overjoyed about the holiday season as her mom always was, and Callie finds a little relief in the easy nature of December compared to the manic celebration it used to be. She's trying not to think about her mom when Happy helps them set up the tree, and when she and Pepper go present shopping, and even when Tony complains about having to wear a suit and tie to the annual Stark Industries holiday party, but it's hard.

Callie thinks about her dorky Christmas sweaters as she pulls on a red, lace ribbon-ed Ellie Saab confection for the party, and she thinks about her old Barbie dolls and stuffed animals as she gushes over the aquarium Tony installed in her room. Even the mistletoe (Tony shoots her a triumphant glance when he manages to catch Pepper beneath it) reminds Callie of Erica Watson and the fact that she will never get to see her again, and this is why Callie is sitting at a table by the end of the night, staring moodily into her mug of hot chocolate.

 _(Tony slides into the seat across the table from her, cheeks flushed from all of the eggnog he's had. "What's up, kid?" he asks, switching out her now-cold cocoa for a new mug, topped with more whipped cream than she knows what to do with. "Why have you been acting like a Scrooge all month?"_

 _Callie shrugs moodily, even as she examines the hot chocolate with a practiced eye. Cautiously, she takes a sip of it, whipped cream clinging to the top of her lip like a mustache, and finds that it's the best thing she's ever tasted._

" _I don't know," she replies in between swallows. "Just thinking about my mom, I guess."_

" _She liked Christmas?"_

 _Callie nods again, and Tony doesn't say anything back while she finishes up her drink, and she's a little grateful. They sit there for a while, just people watching, sometimes waving at the occasional Kardashian or talking politely with Steve Jobs as he passes by. Rhodie is chatting up the Attorney General and Pepper and Happy are doing the hosting thing by the workshop stairs.)_

Finally, towards nine o'clock, the band strikes up _Santa Baby_ and Tony pulls Callie onto the dance floor.

She doesn't resist this time, mostly because she knows he isn't as bad as she thought he was, and even though she's still a little sad, it's fun.

Because she has a new family now, and even though sometimes she still cries when she wakes up from a nightmare and her mom isn't there to comfort her, Callie knows what's happening: She's starting to recover from Erica Watson's death.

And she isn't quite sure how she feels about that.

* * *

Things go wrong again.

It happens in Italy. Tony is saving the Pope from a crazed mega-lo maniac with a gun fetish, when "The Black Bullet", or whatever the hell his name is, whips out a bazooka and fires it straight into the chest of the suit.

It malfunctions, and the blast knocks Tony unconscious. The new mod installed on JARVIS notifies Callie and Pepper at the same time, but Callie is taking the SAT that day and can't answer, so Pepper is the one who picks up the call, and Pepper is the one who enters the code that allows her to take over the suit, and Pepper is the one who takes out "The Black Bullet" through her phone and then sends the suit home.

But Pepper is in New York setting up the last details for the upcoming rebirth of Stark Expo, so Callie is the one who gets home and finds an unconscious Tony lying on the floor as the suit smokes around him.

She does what anyone would do and calls 911.

* * *

"I need to train you more, kid," Tony says with a hoarse, dry laugh, waving away the glass of water Callie offers. "Calling 911? Not the best idea. Coulson's going to chew us out for this one."

"Well what was I supposed to do?" Callie demands sourly, running hands through her hair. "Let you bleed out on the couch?"

"Maybe you should have." Coulson walks into the hospital room then, surly scowl on his face and Pepper on his heels. "Would have saved me a lot of paperwork."

Callie's face is blank, and she stares at Coulson with pinched lips. "Nice," she drawls, " _very_ nice-"

"No, kid." Tony groans as he sits up in the hospital bed, and Callie winces when she sees the way the arc reactor shifts inside of his chest. "No, he's right. We need to teach you how to-"

"Teach me how to _what_?" Callie demands, raking a hand through her hair. "How to deal with the fact that my dad is a super hero? Figure out how to keep myself from getting killed? No. No thank you."

And with that, she grabs her jacket from the table next to the bed and storms out, cheeks flaming.

* * *

Things aren't perfect.

They annoy each other. Sometimes there are days when they can barely stand each other, and Callie's graduation date seems like a death sentence, and by the end of February, both of them have kind of started to wonder if they'll still be talking to each other when she's in college.

Callie is annoying as hell some times- most of the time. (Read: Any time she drags Tony kicking and screaming out of the lab, and he snaps at her more often than not when she does.) She's hypocritical and withdrawn and works herself into anxiety attacks when she starts thinking too hard about the fact that her Rutgers New Brunswick application is _still_ pending. And she can be both a brat and a bitch during self defense lessons with Happy: a, because she doesn't get it, and b, because she doesn't _want_ to get it, and she doesn't _want_ to think about the fact that she will be put into situations where she'll need to know how to defend herself. She doesn't understand, either, no matter how hard she tries to. She doesn't understand this need he has to save people, this need to throw himself into danger day in and day out and flirt with death constantly.

Tony is kind of a horrible example, and Callie thinks she's lucky that she didn't grow up with him because she would definitely need a lot of therapy. He's fucked up, and he admits it. He's an alcoholic, a workoholic, and a former sex/drug-aholic. He has PTSD, OCD, ADHD, and yet refuses to see a psychiatrist no matter how much Pepper and Callie pester him. He doesn't know how to act around her, how to act like a father, and he can't handle her when she has mental breakdowns. He can't deal with tears, so the minute she starts crying he leaves, and Callie has to try hard not to hold it against him when she calls Pepper or Trevor or Happy or (sometimes) Coulson as she sobs so that she's not alone. His idea of solving problems is to ignore them, which makes it worse most of the time, and he doesn't understand what makes her happy (the ocean, cheer leading, her friends, Trevor), just as much as she doesn't understand what makes him happy (saving the world, driving Phil crazy, old cars, Pepper).

But they're trying, and for now, that's all that matters.

* * *

Callie turns eighteen years old on March 11, 2012. Pepper, Rhodie, JARVIS, and Happy are all over joyed, but no one seems to notice the fake smiles on Callie's and Tony's faces throughout the day.

No one but each other, that is.

 _("Hey, kid!" Tony calls halfheartedly as Callie tramps down the stairs that morning, wearing a powder blue camisole with her school skirt and blazer and a grim look on her face. "Happy birthday!"_

 _Callie pastes on a toothy smile and tugs on a curl- a nervous habit of hers, Tony has learned. "Morning, Tony," she says, a little too casually. And just like that, he knows something is wrong.)_

The day proceeds just like their days normally do. Callie picks at the omelet Tony makes her (this one is a "birthday special" which means that it has extra bacon and cheddar cheese in it) and when Happy pulls up in the car, she goes to school and Tony descends into the lab for the day. Ellie and co. have decorated Callie's locker in honor of the occasion and Trent kisses her when he sees her in Oceanography, and Pepper checks her out early so they can go shopping before their little "family" has dinner back at the house that night.

And it really is a nice dinner. Rhodie flies in from New Mexico where they're testing out the prototype of the suit Tony has agreed to build for him, and somehow managed to get a hold of Erica Watson's old dog tags, which he presents a teary-eyed Callie with the moment he walks through the front door. Happy is, of course, present, and pops the cork on a bottle of champagne (Pepper doesn't make any underage drinking comments that night), and JARVIS contributes to the conversation a few times. Even DUM-E is there, acting as their butler and refilling their plates with birthday cake and smoked salmon and pineapple.

But Tony is oddly silent, and drinks enough champagne to give him the slightest buzz, and Callie seems a little wooden when Happy gives her a boxed set of _Downton Abbey_ , their favorite show, and isn't quite as invested in the conversation as she usually would be.

But Callie notices the way Tony just nods along when ever someone asks him a question, and Tony notices the way Callie doesn't even touch her glass (and she really loves champagne), so when she claims she's going to her bedroom to the put away the DVDs and dog tags, he waits a few seconds before slipping away to follow her.

He finds her with an acceptance letter from Rutgers New Brunswick University in her hands.

 _("Kid?" Tony asks, leaning against the door frame, staring at the letter, askance. "What's that?"_

 _Callie jumps a little and stares at him for a second before shaking her head rapidly and tossing the letter onto her bed. "It's nothing," she tells him quickly. "I was just-"_

 _"Nothing my ass," Tony mutters. He's already across the room and picking the paper up, reading the contents before smiling because this is her dream college and he's_ so _proud of her- and that's his kid. That's the coolest kid in the whole wide world-_

 _The smile falls._

 _"You didn't tell me," he realizes. "Why didn't you tell me?"_

 _Callie shifts her weight from foot to foot. "I don't know," she answers softly, honestly._

 _Because she doesn't. She really doesn't._

 _The past year has been both awful and incredible. They've been living in this dream world- this world where all of the threats from outside can't make it into the house and it feels like nothing will separate them, until something does; until something goes wrong and one of them gets hurt and they can't skirt around each other any more and make witty remarks and exchange sarcasm and they have to deal with the fact that they're starting to love each other like a real father and daughter love each other._

 _But the thing is, a threat has finally made it into the house- a threat that they won't be able to ignore for much longer._

 _The future._

 _The future away from each other. Away from the house and the beach and the LA sunshine and the terror that is Iron Man. Over fourteen-thousand miles and seven hours by plane and an entire country. Far, far away, and they don't want to lose each other. Not again. Not when they've fought so hard and so silently for this._

 _And Tony knows, but he drops the letter on the bed and walks out of the room anyway._

 _And Callie is about to cry.)_

LINE BREAK

When Callie doesn't know how to feel, she goes to the beach. When Tony doesn't know how to feel, he goes to the rooftop.

She finds him there a few minutes later, jacket and shoes discarded near the window he's climbed through, perched precariously on the ledge facing the city lights with his socked feet hanging and hands clutching the shingles with white-knuckled harshness. He doesn't say anything when he hears her scrabble against the wooden beams for purchase, doesn't even spare her a glance when she sits down next to him, even though he knows how much she hates heights.

"I'm sorry," she finally says, after they stare at the Los Angeles skyline for a few minutes. "I should have told you, I was just... scared."

"Scared?" Tony doesn't look at her. "Scared of what? That I wouldn't be proud of you? How could I not be? This is your dream school-"

"I know!" Callie is tugging on a curl again, and he's finally staring at her with ill-disguised hurt in his eyes. He doesn't snap at her when she hurts him anymore, because she sees straight through that mask and it doesn't work for shit on her. She almost reads him too well- almost better than Pepper, even.

"I was scared that-" Callie clears her throat and lets go of the curl, ripping at the sides of the letter in her hands. Finally, she takes a deep breath and continues, in a whisper, "We haven't talked about what happens after..."

"After you graduate?" Tony nods, staring at her fingers as they worry the paper. "I know. I just thought-"

"That we could avoid it until the actual day? Yeah. Me too."

There's another one of their long silences then, and both of them know they can't hide any more.

"So what do we do?"

Callie, as usual, is the first one to talk.

Tony just shrugs, focused on looking anywhere but at her face. "It's your choice, kid," he tells her in that low, serious tone he doesn't use much. "What do you want? Do you-" His voice actually cracks, and that's how Callie knows he really does care about her more than he likes to admit. "Are you still going to want me as your dad in college, or...?"

Callie is trying hard not to cry. "That depends. Would you still want to put up with me?"

This time, he cracks a grin, and his arm goes around her bare shoulders. "Kid, you wouldn't be able to get rid of me."

"Then yes, I still want you to be my dad," Callie says, rolling her eyes even as she squeezes him as tight as she can without worrying about them falling off of the roof. He smells like safety, like home: motor oil, spicy cologne and coffee.

Tony smiles into her hair. "Good," he tells her. "I wouldn't have it any other way."

Neither of them say the l-word, but they're both thinking it, and it's probably the best birthday Callie's ever had.

* * *

Trent Derringer gets accepted to Yale in April and dumps Callie the very next day when they see each other in Oceanography.

 _("Long distance just isn't going to work for us," he tells her apologetically, even though she's staring at him with her mouth dropped open because, if anything, she always thought she'd be the one dumping him, not the other way around. "And besides, I want to be in a frat and I don't want to risk cheating on you."_

 _Instead of answering, Callie dumps her beaker of stacked water on him and storms out, tears in her eyes. He gets the hint and doesn't try to talk to her after that.)_

As adorably stupid as he is, Callie really does like Trent, and just like she usually is when something doesn't go her way, she's practically useless for a few days. It's Spring Break though, so Callie deems it perfectly acceptable to plant herself on the couch with every pillow and throw blanket in the house and watch every Disney film ever created while eating nothing but ice cream and grocery store sushi, courtesy of JARVIS who assures her that he "never liked that Derringer boy anyway" and is "quite certain you can do much better, Madame." It's sweet, and cheers her up a little bit (but not much), and Tony decides that just sitting and watching _Hercules_ and _Finding Nemo_ with her isn't enough.

It's time to take action and get some revenge.

 _(Callie isn't quite sure what to do when Tony strides up to her, dressed all in black with a knit hat perched on his head, and slams a pack of extra-quilted toilet paper and a bundle of black fabric on the coffee table._

 _"Um, hi?" she says._

 _"Get up," Tony tells her. He pulls the hat down over his face and she sees that it is, in fact, a ski mask. "We've got shit to do."_

 _Callie is understandable skeptical, and asks- what she thinks is- a very reasonable question: "What_ kind _of shit?" because with the ski mask and everything Tony looks like he wants to do something very illegal, but apparently he takes offense to the question because the next thing she knows he's dragging her out of the nest by her ankles (this involves a lot of screaming and Tony getting kicked in the face- JARVIS threatens to call the police, or worse, Pepper, if they don't shut up) and tossing her into the soccer-mom mini van like she's a sack of potatoes._

 _"Put on your ski mask," he tells her as they drive past the Santa Monica pier._

 _"No," Callie replies snottily._

 _"Please?"_

 _"It looks stupid!"_

 _"For me?"_

 _"I am not putting on the damn ski mask!")_

She puts on the damn ski mask.

And then they TP Trent's house.

Apparently Tony has been watching a lot of cheesy break-up-revenge comedies. (He has a secret love for chick flicks that he's threatened to kill her for, should she ever tell anyone. He claims it's her fault for "dragging all of your teen-girl-ish-ness into my nice bachelor pad!")

It may be illegal, but it's also a fuck-ton of fun, even when the Derringers' alarm goes off when Callie accidentally trips into their front door, and even when they have to high-tail it into the mini van and peel away, and even when Coulson and Happy yell at them for sneaking out at two in the morning.

Still, she's over Trent now, and considering the fact that she's graduating in exactly two months, Callie doesn't think she really minds.

* * *

May flies by in a whirl of parent nights and senior nights and shopping for the perfect dress and planning for Stark Expo, and before Callie and Tony know it, it's graduation day.

Tony is on pins and needles the entire morning, and he doesn't even complain (or, at least, he doesn't complain as much as he _usually_ does) when Pepper forces him into a jacket and tie for the occasion, but when a very nervous Callie walks into the living room in a deep green dress and her mom's dog tags all that anxiety goes away, and all he is is a proud father. A messed up, panicking, clueless father, but a proud one nonetheless.

He's beaming that proud beam of his as Pepper and Happy and DUM-E snap a million pictures of them before Callie has to be at the school gym, because he has the most beautiful, photogenic daughter in the world.

He's smirking when they drop her off and she struts straight past Trent Derringer and the boys to stand with her girl friends, because he has the most strong, confident daughter in the world (and also is there any chance he can convince her to be a nun because he's not going to let another boy get close to her without a fight, he can tell you that).

He's whooping at the top of his lungs when Callie's name is announced because he has the coolest, smartest daughter in the world.

He's almost crying but not quite when she accepts her diploma, because he has the most successful, incredible daughter in the world.

Yeah, Tony considers himself pretty lucky that night during the graduation party he's thrown for her, because he has the best daughter in the world, he's realized. And he will never be able to thank Erica Watson enough for the gift she's given him.

* * *

The final construction for Stark Expo has been completed, Callie and Pepper have gotten her everything she needs for her freshman dorm, the plane tickets have been purchased, and the entire Stark gang is ready to go to New York, and later, Monte Carlo, for the summer.

Callie is going to miss LA, she thinks as the private jet taxis down the runway. She's going to miss high school, and she's going to miss living with Tony, and she's always going to miss her life in Texas, but she's also excited.

She knows now that no matter what happens, she and Tony will stick together, and that her future is very, very bright.

Even Iron Man can't get in the way of that.

* * *

 **A/N: Hey guys. Next chapter is the beginning of** _ **Iron Man 2,**_ **although I'm debating posting the next interlude at the same time. It isn't done yet, but it won't be from Sunday's point of view. Instead, it takes place during Steve and Bucky's time in the war and is mainly focusing on the creation of the Screaming Commandos. It will be featuring another OC (there are going to be a lot of those in this story- deal with it), by the name of Katherine Beatty, a field nurse from the comics who is assigned to the Howling Commandos medical team.**

 **As for** _ **Iron Man 2**_ **, I won't be deviating from the original plot very much, and the movie will probably take up one and a half chapters- two at most. My original plan was to have Tony and Callie get into a fight, but I feel like I've done that one too many times, and I like where they are now. Instead, I think I'll have them adjusting to their new surroundings and establish them as a solid family unit.**

 **Obviously Natasha is going to be a main character in the upcoming chapters. She and Callie** _ **will**_ **become friends- just a warning. If you have a problem with that for some reason, you're free to leave. (Please don't I love all of you and the overwhelming support you've given this story).**

 **There are going to be a few more crossovers in the future (Read: Just** _ **Spiderman**_ **and** _ **Deadpool**_ **, my favs) but I'll take what you said into consideration and try not to mix DC in too much. (Grayson and Wayne will probably come back for a little bit, mostly because I'm obsessed with Batman.) Just a little warning!**

 **Anyways, I love all of you guys. Thank you so much for all of the support, and please leave a review!**

 **Until next time!  
~Lil**


	8. Interlude 2: Bucky

**Devil's Promise  
Interlude 2: Bucky**

* * *

 _ **November**_ _ **10**_ _ **th**_ _ **, 1942  
Fez, French Morocco, North Africa: Operation Torch**_

* * *

Bucky never wanted to go to war.

He doesn't like violence- hates it, _despises_ it. He loathes it even as he dashes through the battle-torn city of Fez with an unused grenade in one hand and a loaded machine gun in the other. Something explodes in the street next to him and the blast rips through one of the buildings, sending Bucky and the only two members left on his squad flying in a cloud of dust and crushed sand stone. He spits dirt out of his mouth and hopes whoever lived in the house is long gone by now.

"Italians!" James Falsworth barks, already firing off a round at the approaching enemy. "Five of 'em. Two in HYDRA garb. You still alive, Morita? Barnes?"

The rubble shifts on Bucky's left and a voice calls out, " _Hai._ "

Jim Morita, Japanese defector and one of the best men Bucky has ever met jumps up from the crumbled building with guns blazing, and hauls Bucky to his feet.

The Italians have already started firing at them and Bucky's blood boils when he sees the HYDRA uniforms. He shoots at those two first, but they dodge easily. He should have known better. HYDRA soldiers usually have more training than the everyday Joe.

Of course, Bucky also happens to be a better soldier than the everyday Joe.

There's still a grenade in his hand. As Morita shoots one Italian through the stomach and bashes another on the head with the butt of his gun, and Falsworth causes general chaos by firing randomly at will, Bucky ducks behind the foundation of one of the ruined buildings, sees the sewer grate beneath the HYDRA soldiers' feet, pulls the pin of the grenade out with his teeth, and throws it.

It works, but not quite in the way he thought it would.

The street explodes beneath the enemy's feet. Good.

One of them was about to shoot at him and misfires. Good.

The bullet flies directly into the flesh of Bucky's right arm. Very, very bad.

"Shit," is all Bucky says, and that's when he passes out.

* * *

 _ **November 11**_ _ **th**_ _ **, 1942  
Medical tent, British base-camp, just outside of Rabat, French Morocco, North Africa: Operation Torch**_

* * *

Bucky wakes up to another explosion and tries flinging himself out of the way. He ends up tangled in the blankets of his cot and falls to the floor with an "oof", sending a jar through his throbbing arm.

A voice from the bed next to him chuckles. "Alright there, lad? Just another air raid. No need for alarm."

Bucky fights back a groan and stares at the source of the voice from his position on the tent's floor. A heavy-set, mustached man in a bowler hat grins down at him, face slightly green but unnaturally jolly.

"Dum Dum Dugan with Her Majesty's Military," the man introduces himself, sticking out a hand for Bucky to shake. "Pleased to meet you."

"Bucky Barnes." He shakes Dum Dum's hand and uses it to leverage himself back onto his cot. "American."

He shakes his head, clearing it of a bit of the fuzziness while Dum Dum loudly complains about the air raids even as bombs crash over their heads and someone gives the order for a black-out. Bucky takes stock of his current location.

He's sitting on a cot in the medical tent, probably back at the base camp, which means an ambulance driver came and got him or Morita and Falsworth hauled him through Fez and across the desert while he was out. Dum Dum and Bucky are cut off from the rest of the medical tent by a thin, cotton sheet hanging from the ceiling, and Bucky wrinkles his nose at the smell of blood and bleach and the sickly moans of the other soldiers. As he watches, lights flick out from behind the sheet and it rustles before pulling back, revealing a pretty-enough young nurse with brown hair and an anxious expression.

"Hello, Mr. Dugan," she says quietly, reaching for the lamp on the table between the two soldiers and switching it off. She doesn't have an accent, and Bucky assumes she's one of the American nurses assigned to the British squads. "Sorry about the black-out. It should be over soon."

The room goes dark, and the three of them wait in tense silence as the air raid booms and screams before coming to a stop what feels like hours later. The head nurse calls out that it's safe to make noise again, and the light flickers back on.

Dum Dum sweeps the bowler hat off of his head, revealing a neatly coiled white bandage wrapped around his skull. "Miss Beatty," he says formally, mustache twitching. "A pleasure, as always."

The nurse smiles tiredly over the papers she's holding, and when she sets them down on the table next to the lamp, Bucky sees that it's his and Dum Dum's medical records. Bucky listens as she chatters softly while changing Dum Dum's bandages, trying to put the two of them at ease, but he notices the little things about her: the bags under her warm brown eyes, the loose hairs coming free from their pins, the bruises on her arms, the slight limp she has as she moves over to his cot.

Nurse Beatty hasn't slept in days.

She smiles anyway. "Good to see you awake, Private Barnes," she says, fingers dancing lightly up and down the length of his wounded arm. "Mr. Falsworth and Mr. Morita have been worried about you."

Bucky lets out the breath he hasn't known he was holding, glad that his squad-mates are alive. Weight lifted off of his chest, he manages a somewhat-suave grin that Steve would be proud of and sits up slightly. "Will I live, Nurse?"

"Barely," she confirms, smiling at him, looking a little less tired as she starts redressing his bandages. "You're a very lucky man, Mr. Barnes. A centimeter closer and the bullet would have hit an artery. It's a miracle you still have the arm."

Bucky feels a chill pass through the room, which makes no sense as they're currently in the middle of the North African desert. He shakes the feeling off and watches silently as Nurse Beatty changes his bandages, laughing softly while Dum Dum jokes and flirts with her. Finally, she secures the dressings with a safety pin and takes a step back.

"That should hold you for the night, Private," she tells him, seeming satisfied with her work. "I know you've been unconscious all day, but please try to sleep tonight. Your body needs the rest to heal."

"How long until I can fight again?" Bucky asks anxiously, because the sooner he's on his feet, the sooner he can help end Operation Torch, and the sooner they end Operation Torch, the sooner he can get back home and see Steve and his mom again.

"Sleep," the nurse says sternly. "Then we'll see."

She turns to leave, but Bucky stops her. "Honestly, ma'am. How long do you think it's going to be?"

The nurse pauses. "At best," she says, turning back to face the two soldiers, "three days, maybe, if you're a fast healer. But they aren't going to put you on the front lines for a few weeks at least. I'd say you're out for the count in Morocco, soldier. Relax. There will be more battles."

Bucky nods hesitantly and lets himself sink slowly back into the cot. Dum Dum is already snoring as the nurse switches the light off again and makes sure the two of them are settled. As she collects their bandages, Bucky watches, and he says, without really meaning to, "You need sleep, too."

Nurse Beatty huffs out a breath, arms full of bandages, and blows a stray curl out of her eyes. "I know," she says simply. "I'm planning on it. But you need it more than I do."

Bucky stares pointedly at the bruises on her arms. Nurse Beatty frowns at him, the stern look not matching her soft features, and shifts the bandages to cover the marks.

"Tomorrow," she promises. "I'll tell you tomorrow."

* * *

 _ **March 30**_ _ **th**_ _ **, 1943  
Officer's tent, American base camp, somewhere in the Dolomite Mountains, Italy: Italian Campaign**_

* * *

Her name is Katherine Beatty, and she enlisted in the Red Cross for her brother, who is in the Navy on the Japanese side of the war. They were separated, and she isn't happy about it, but she keeps going anyway.

Katherine works on the field, knows how to dig a trench, shoot a gun, and make a tourniquet out of a branch and a soldier's belt. She was injured in Morocco by shrapnel from a stray grenade, which is why she was in the medical tent back in Rabat, and right now she is very, very angry.

Fighting in Italy has come to a stand-still, and by all accounts, the Italian Campaign is close to being abandoned. It's been five months since Operation Torch was completed, and two since Private Barnes and his squad have gone missing.

General Clark is signing condolence letters, and Katherine is trying to stop him, arguing for him to send out a search or rescue party until she's blue in the face. This is how Steve Rogers meets her, and this is how he learns that Bucky is missing.

Now he's angry, too.

"And they never even thought about going into the camp after them?" he demands, even if he feels a little guilty about it, as Katherine guides him over to a more secluded part of the base where they won't be easily overheard.

Katherine shakes her head glumly, straightening out her hat before answering, "They haven't got a soldier to spare, Captain. I don't know what they're telling the folks back on the home front, but things are rough out here. We aren't winning. The other guys have the advantage right now."

"But there has to be a way," Steve says, _because it's Bucky_. The one who always gets him out of fights and tries to set him up on dates with girls who never give him the time of day. The one who loves Christmas more than anything and gets this fascinated gleam in his eye anytime someone starts talking science.

He isn't letting Bucky go without a fight.

"There is," Katherine admits after a few moments of hesitation, "but you'd have to be bonkers to try it."

And Steve gets to his feet, pulls on his mask, and frowns at her. "Then call me crazy and send me to the looney bin."

As it turns out, they won't be needing a rescue part after all. All they need is Captain America.

* * *

 _ **May 10th, 1943  
White Horse Tavern, New York, New York, USA: Howling Commandos Recruitment Circuit/ Three-day Leave**_

* * *

Steve chooses his team.

He's the leader, obviously, but he chooses Bucky as second-in-command, and Bucky couldn't be happier. He has to admit that he was expecting it (it was _Steve_. _His Steve_ ), but he's still honored and proud and (trying not to think about his time in the camp) determined to pick the right members of the rest of the team.

Dum Dum Dugan is the obvious choice for a sharpshooter. He's unwavering and strong, and Steve was thoroughly impressed by how well he fought during their escape. They ask him to join as the Allies pack up their bases in Italy and pile onto the planes. He replies with a tip of the cap and a sturdy "Aye", but judging by the bright red blush creeping up to his scalp, Bucky can tell he's mollified.

They never ask Agent Peggy Carter to be their handler- no one does. The moment the Howling Commandos become a thing, she tells them flat out that she's going to be supervising them, and Bucky, Steve and Dum Dum are too scared to tell her no.

The day after Peggy joins Howard Stark sneaks onto the plane back to New York somehow, plops into the seat across from Steve and announces in no uncertain terms that he is their civilian liaison. Steve isn't happy about it ("I don't like the way he talks to women, Buck. He's a smarmy bastard.") but Howard doesn't take no for an answer, and by the time they land in the United States he's already spouting off about all the great weapons he's designing for them. (Steve and Bucky are both wondering what they've gotten themselves into at this point.)

Bucky is the one who suggests that Morita and Falsworth come on board as grunt fighters, and based on what he saw of them at the camp, Steve agrees with the decision. Morita is honored when they show up at his apartment with the suggestion and a few bottles of beer, but Falsworth just sniffs, that God damn smirk on his mouth, and tells them he was expecting it.

 _("He's an asshole," Steve comments as they walk away from Falsworth's place in Brooklyn._

 _"You got that right." Bucky casts a disdainful (and a little impressed) look over his shoulder before swallowing what's left of the cheap white wine from the bodega down the street and tossing the empty bottle into a trashcan. "But he's the best kind of asshole a fella' can be.")_

A few people have a problem with their next team member, Gabe Jones, the first black man in an integrated unit, but he's a good fighter and an even better person (he offers to leave the team the day after joining since a lot of people seem to have a problem with him being on it), but Steve threatens to sock the attorney general if he uses the n-word _one more time_ and everyone shuts up after that.

The hardest decision is probably Jacques Dernier, based entirely on the fact that he's a rebellious French man with a thick accent and an even thicker skull, who wears a bright red beret constantly despite it going completely against code of uniform. But he's the best explosives expert Bucky and Steve have met in a while, and both of them like him well enough, so he makes the squad.

Last but not least, they need a field nurse. Steve is the one who suggests Katherine, and even though Bucky doesn't like it very much (he's been trying to distance himself from her and distance himself from how soft and touchable her hair looks and distance himself from how much he wants to kiss her constantly frowning lips), but after a lot of consideration, he knows it's the right decision.

He invites her to a small army party at the White Horse Tavern. Steve teases him a lot as he's getting ready, mostly because he doesn't usually get this nervous before dates (but Katherine isn't really any gal from off the block, and besides that, this isn't a date, it's a recruitment mission), but it's nice to have some normalcy and to be back in their old apartment, so Bucky doesn't mind and lets Steve have his fun.

What he isn't expecting is his reaction to seeing Katherine with her hair all done up and wearing a pretty dress, instead of the nurse's outfit he's gotten so used to. She isn't beautiful, really (not like Peggy, whose entrance causes a collective gasp to run through the bar), but she's pretty and sweet and soft, and when Bucky asks her to dance, he never wants to let go.

But then he realizes what a dizzy sap he's being, blushes, and walks her over to where Steve is waiting with a smiling, mollified-looking Dum Dum and a smirking Falsworth.

They ask her to join the Howling Commandos medical squad.

She agrees.

In the years to come, Bucky will wish she hadn't.


	9. Self-Destruct

**Devil's Promise**  
 **Chapter 6: Self-Destruct**

The first time he notices it, he's helping Callie move into her new dorm room.

It's a piece of shit. Really. The building is in between the train tracks and fraternity row, and Tony stashes "improved" tasers behind the dresser and the desk, panic buttons every five feet along the walls, and a bottle of pepper spray in between the thin mattress and the squeaky box spring. (Callie will silently remove all of them after he's left and keep everything in a shoe box under her bed.) The paint is peeling off of the brick walls, the bed is barely long enough for her to lay down, and her roommate won't be moving in for another three months.

Callie loves it, of course, especially once she's added her fish tank and alpaca-fur blanket and the pictures of their day at Disney Land. She's all for spending the night there, but Tony immediately shoots down the idea and tells her that she'll be sleeping in the apartment all summer with no if's, and's, or but's.

It's as he's lifting a box of clothes into her tiny little closet that the stinging pain shoots through his chest, like a million needles stabbing his heart at once, and he gasps in shock. The box tumbles out of his hands and spills all over the wooden floor. He falls to his knees, hands flying to the arc reactor, and for a terrifying second, he begins to think that maybe the awful diet and caffeine addiction have finally given him that heart attack Pepper warned him about.

"Tony?" Callie calls when she hears his sharp intake of breath, but she screams it again when he falls. "Tony!"

She's there the next second, crouched down beside him, hands fluttering around the arc reactor, trying to help, but the pain passes after a few minutes and he gets back to his feet.

There's only one question, and he asks it half an hour later as they sit in the campus coffee shop, him panting, clutching at his peppermint mocha for dear life, and her staring at him in worry over her mug of hot chocolate.

"What the hell was that?"

* * *

Tony copes in strange ways.

Alcohol, his usual method, isn't going to be readily available to him for a while (Pepper is making him go sober for the next three months so he doesn't screw up Stark Expo), and there's no chance in hell he's getting into drugs again.

So he turns to his other ways: caffeine, junk food, and hard work.

Despite what the world may think, Tony Stark cannot stand black coffee. Callie discovered six months ago that the espresso machine in his lab has been re-worked to fill the mugs most of the way with milk, and that Tony spent a solid three years of his college career in Chemistry, trying to come up with a clear creamer so no one would know just how much he used.

He's addicted to Starbucks and their frappucinos. His favorite is the double chocolate chip with extra whipped cream and caramel sauce, but he's too embarrassed to order it himself, so Callie makes frequent Starbucks runs for him, tailed closely by Happy, who hasn't let her out of his sight since Gotham.

 _(It's halfway through June that Callie finally snaps, slamming Tony's frappucino down on the bench of his New York workshop and glaring at him._

 _"Forty-eight minutes," she announces hotly, placing her hands on the hips of her shorts. "The line ran all the way outside the front doors. And it's the hottest day of the summer. My sunburn has sunburn, Tony!"_

 _And when he finally looks up from his computer for long enough to actually register that she's there, he has to stifle a laugh when he sees how red her shoulders are beneath her lace tank top._

 _"I'm telling you, I'm done," she mutters, rubbing at her freckled nose. "Get your own damn Starbucks. I almost missed the internship application deadline last week because of you."_

 _And two days later, he hires a barista to uptake permanent residence in the apartment.)_

Next comes the junk food stage. It's summer in New York City, and there's plenty of it in ready supply all over the place. Hot dog and pretzel and funnel cake vendors every few blocks, fast food restaurants on every street, five star restaurants and little French cafes with the best croissants outside of Paris. Callie remembers reading somewhere that you could live in the city for one-hundred years and eat out for every meal, never going to the same place twice, and you would never be able to eat at every single restaurant on the island.

She tells Tony this, and he immediately sets out to prove her wrong.

 _("Where the hell?"_

 _They're in Little Italy at a hole-in-the-wall joint with plates the size of Callie's head and waiters in tuxedos. Tony is in jeans and a t-shirt, Callie in Converse and overalls, and Pepper, fuming in Jimmy Choos and a pantsuit._

 _Tony hasn't warned them about the dress code, and Callie winces when she hears the disapproving maitre-de gossiping with the chef in Italian._

 _Callie is staring around the place wildly, scowling when she realizes that the only other people there for lunch probably belong to the mafia, and she shifts nervously in her seat, not touching her Fettuccine. She's still full from the crepery this morning and the four-star Thai place the night before._

 _Pepper's lips are in a thin line, and she slams her fork down on the white satin table cloth with a 'chink'. "I'm putting my foot down," she says with a disapproving sniff, waving away the waiter who approaches them with a bottle of red wine. "No more crap-food. You're a super hero, Tony, and your health is horrible. I'm putting you on a diet, and you're joining Callie for kickboxing lessons with Happy."_

 _Callie's head whips up from behind the desert menu. "I'm still taking those?"_

 _Tony's nostrils flare and he scowls as he hands over his card to the waiter, apparently ready to leave now. "Kid, you're living in New York now. As far as I'm concerned, your_ major _is kickboxing.)_

With the junk food gone, replaced by Kale shakes and sweat-sessions with Happy, and the barista firmly kicked out of the apartment by a wrathful Pepper, Tony has only his work to help him cope with his loss of control. He becomes a man possessed, earning himself a doctorate in medical sciences in between press conferences and ribbon-cutting ceremonies for Stark Expo.

He has radiation poisoning. The arc reactor isn't doing its job, and the missile shrapnel has apparently tainted him. He can keep it at bay, but not for long, and Callie is the only one he tells, but only because she forces him to.

She's scared. She doesn't want to lose him, and he hasn't been able to figure out how to stop the poisoning. They don't say anything about it. They don't mention the fact that Pepper and Happy and Rhodie don't know and that there's a very real chance it could kill him, but they also don't mention the fact that if anyone can figure out how to stop it, it's him.

* * *

Monaco feels a lot like a dream come true. The air is fresh, the sun is shining, and the legal drinking age is eighteen.

The vacation is ridiculously blissful. So blissful, in fact, that Callie can't believe it. The entire two weeks they're in the country she's half-expecting Coulson to pop up from behind a beach umbrella with a pina colada in either hand and tell them that shit is about to get seriously fucked up. (Not that he would ever use those words- Callie has never heard Coulson curse before- but still.)

So when things go awry on the Speedway, no one is very surprised.

"Oh my God!"

Callie is the first one to react when they see Tony getting attacked on TV. Happy is by her side in an instant, and then she and Pepper are racing outside and into the rented Mercedes, the ten-ton briefcase that holds the suit heavy in Callie's hands.

She trips over her high heels as she clambers into the backseat, and immediately regrets wearing a dress. She has historically bad luck when it comes to "problem days", as Coulson and Happy call them.

"Go!" Pepper orders from the passenger seat. "Go, go, go!"

Happy floors it, pulling away from the curb and Pepper's confused-looking, new PA, and Callie is thrown against the seat with a yelp. _What is it with the bad drivers in this family?_ she asks herself as they skid through the Monte Carlo streets, Pepper alternating between shouting directions and trying to get a hold of Coulson, Rhodie, or the US Embassy.

"There!" Callie yells, spying the fight through the windshield. She pops up from her slouch like a jack-in-the-box, only to be flung back against the window when Happy swerves onto the sidewalk, through a chain-link fence (Pepper and Callie are screaming expletives at the top of their lungs), and onto the race track.

This month's terrorist uses whips that look like they're made out of pure electricity. Happy rams the car into him the minute he sees him.

"You just committed vehicular manslaughter!" Callie shrieks, but no one hears her over the commotion.

Pepper is screaming her head off at Tony, Happy letting out yelps of shock every time the terrorist starts to move again and he has to drive the car back into him. Tony is yelling at Callie ("What in the Sam-hell are you doing here kid- _Is that the suit? Give it to me!_ "), and she finally just wrenches the door open and lugs the suit up from its rest on the floor. Only she doesn't quite make it in time.

" _Incoming_!" she hears Happy yell.

Later, Callie will look back on this and think that she was very lucky to be so close to the door at that moment. Because bad-guy-of-the-week took the opportunity to shove the car back a yard and cut it in half with one of his whips. The electric rope glides so close to Callie that she can hear it sizzling as it slices through the leather of her seat.

Tony flinches, but otherwise doesn't react. Callie knows there's a storm raging behind his eyes though.

"The case, kid. Give me the case!"

The terrorist slashes the whip at her and Happy's side of the car again, hacking it off closer this time- nearly brushing Happy's thigh. Callie screams, but she's already throwing the case at Tony, barely registering what she's doing, and he suits up the fastest she's ever seen him do it before.

Happy has disentangled himself from the air bag by this point and is yanking her from her seat, Pepper already in the hands of the SWAT team, who are escorting her to a safer place. Happy throws his arm over Callie's head, the same way he does when the paparazzi are swarming them, and practically carries her away from the race track at a dead sprint.

She doesn't see the moment when Tony defeats the terrorist, but she does see the moment when the terrorist spits out a mouthful of blood and starts laughing.

It's the most chilling sound she's ever heard.

* * *

 _"Я возьму все, от вы- вашей женщины , вашей дочери, ваш мир . Вы будете сжигать_ _."_

Later, Tony has JARVIS run Vanko's words through a Russian to English translator. What he finds sends a jolt straight to his heart.

" _I will take everything from you, Stark- your woman, your daughter, your world. You will burn._ "

* * *

The debacle in Monaco causes a huge uproar. The National Guard threatens to confiscate the suits, Coulson spends a solid two hours chastising Tony, and James Hammer takes the opportunity to mock Stark Industries and everything it stands for.

He makes Callie's blood boil.

She's watching the news report back at home- Malibu. It's playing on one of the many screens in the gym Tony had built a few weeks ago, and Happy knocks Callie on her ass while she isn't looking.

"Never turn your back on your opponent," he warns her as she forces herself back to her feet for the umpteenth time that day.

Callie groans, checking to see if her nose is bleeding. It is. Did she break it again?

"Time out," she mutters, wandering over to the side of the boxing ring and slipping out. Pepper and Natalie Rushman are both there, both issuing statements to the press, and Natalie sends her a sympathetic glance. She offers Callie a tissue from her purse.

"Thanks," Callie tells her, a little bit wary. Pepper has interviewed five PA's since becoming CEO, and three of them were only in it for the chance at getting into Tony Stark's pants.

Natalie shrugs and says, "Things aren't going too well?"

Callie shakes her head grudgingly. "No," she answers. "I'm not very good at boxing."

"So don't box," Natalie tells her simply, like it's the easiest thing in the world.

Callie stares at her for a minute. "Um, Tony wants-"

"Mr. Stark is an expert in many things, Miss Watson," Natalie interrupts smoothly, "but self-defense is not one of them. If he wants you to be safe, you need to learn what's best for you."

"And you think you know what's best for me," Callie states, although it sounds a lot more like a question.

"I don't think, Miss Watson," Natalie tells her, "I know."

* * *

She does.

Natalie's fighting-style is a mix of martial arts and kick-boxing. Her plan for Callie can be summed up in six words: "Use your opponent's force against them."

It works great.

Callie has never been the most physically strong person. Sure, she can do back flips and basket-tosses and double-tuck back handspring triple fulls, but she weighs maybe one hundred and twenty pounds soaking wet and stands at about five-foot-seven, so she's not about to be taking down any professional wrestlers any time soon.

But the way Natalie is teaching her, all tumbling moves and flips and dodges, is something that Callie turns out to be very good at.

She and Natalie become very close over that month, and Natalie even comes with her to get her hair cut. It falls just below Callie's collarbone now, and the shorter length has smoothed out her chaotic curls so they're less kinky.

Things are great through August, even if Tony is acting like a madman for most of it, so everything that happens at the birthday party throws Callie for a loop.

It's supposed to be the best weekend they've ever had. Tony is turning thirty-five (" _Thirty_ ," he lies every other minute), and Callie is flying to New York to start her internship with Doctor Alexander Suttwell the next morning.

And then things go wrong.

Callie can't really pinpoint how or when, they just do.

The night starts out well enough, with Tony laughing at the Iron Man fan-art Callie has printed off and framed for him (because, really, what are you supposed to get for the man who has everything?). But then the drinks start building, one after another after another, and Tony puts the suit on and people Callie has never seen before are crashing the party, egging him on, blondes in low-cut dresses and-

"Callie?"

It's Rhodie. He's standing there, jaw clenched, looking at her in concern, and she softens a little bit. "What's wrong?" he asks.

"Nothing," Callie responds instinctively. "Really, I-" He notices the look she sends toward where Tony is standing, hidden behind a crowd of well-wishers. "I just need some air."

It's too late. Rhodie is already shoving his way through the crowd, Callie following after him hastily, and he scowls when he sees Tony in the suit. "Are you kidding me?" he demands, and Callie knows he's not mad at her but it freaks her out a little bit anyway. "I stick my neck out on the chopping block for this guy, and this is how he repays me?"

"Rhodie, I-"

Pepper gets onstage then, trying to dissolve the party and contain Tony at the same time, and if things went wrong before, they go really, _really_ wrong now.

 _("Natalie, get Callie out of here," Pepper commands, the three of them moving through the crowd toward the exit as Tony and Rhodie go at it with each other._

 _"But, Pepper-" Callie tries to say, and Pepper cuts her off and she can tell she's freaking out._

 _"It's alright. I'll have someone pick up your suitcase before your flight." Then, to Natalie: "Get her to my apartment. Have Happy drive you-"_

 _"No, Pepper-!" Callie says again, and this time she stops moving, and Natalie and Pepper both stop with her._

 _"_ What _, Callie?" Pepper demands, and her voice cracks a little in the middle of it._

 _"Is-" Callie stutters over herself because she sounds so, so pathetic saying this, but she needs to know, and-_

 _"Is Tony...?"_

 _Pepper just shakes her head. "I don't know, sweetie.")_

* * *

"Tony."

There's a sharp feeling in his side. The world comes into focus and then blurs out again. He tries to doze back off.

"Tony."

The owner of the voice kicks him again. This time, his eyes open and stay open, but when he sees Callie standing over him, a frown on her face, he kind of wants to go to sleep again. He hates disappointing her.

She smiles thinly at him. "Morning, butt-head."

"Well, aren't you a ray of sunshine?" Tony squints at her, hands of the suit trying to block out some of the Malibu sun, and he takes in the damage to the house with a numb kind of echoing in his chest.

Well, if there was ever a time to remodel, now would be it.

Callie frowns again (but not at him this time) and stares down at her sandals, kicking at the rubble around what used to be the gym. "You really fucked up this time, Tony," she tells him simply. But she didn't have to, because he already knew that.

He stares at her warily anyway. "Are you-?"

"I'm not mad," she tells him. ( _That makes one,_ he thinks.) "Just... Just confused. Is this about-?"

"Yes," he interrupts. "No. I don't know. But I'm pretty sure I'm dying, kid."

Callie sucks in a deep breath and tucks a lock of newly-short hair behind her ear. "You'll figure out a way to save yourself," she tells him in that determined way of hers, even though he isn't so sure. "Figuring out a way to save the family? That's a different story."

Tony winces as he stumbles to his feet, the suit whining in protest. It took quite the beating last night, which reminds him.

Rhodie stole his suit.

"I've got a lot to do, kid," he grumbles, already making a list of all the things he's destroyed in the past twenty-four hours.

"Well, so do I."

A horn honks impatiently. Tony turns and sees Happy's Porsche idling in the driveway and gives Callie a pointed, questioning look.

"I have a plane to catch," she tells him, annoyed that he forgot. "My internship starts tomorrow morning at eight."

"Right." How could he forget? She's wanted this since she was five. "Congratulations on that, by the way."

Callie fixes him with a withering stare and takes another deep breath. Happy honks the horn again, and both of them glare at him, but they know it's time to go.

She leans in and hugs him, and he freezes a little bit, but in the next second it's over and she's stepping away from him, picking through the ruins of the house to get to the car.

"You can do it, Dad," she calls over her shoulder. "I know you can."


	10. Recruited

**Devil's Promise**  
 **Chapter 7: Recruited  
**

Callie Watson meets Peter Parker on her second day of living alone in New York, and her first day working under Doctor Alexander Suttwell and the rest of his team. Callie and Peter are the only two interns on the job, and she isn't quite sure what to think of him.

He's a quiet, unassuming weirdo with fluffy, gingery hair, who snarks the hell out of her every five seconds and then adjusts his glasses and grins like he didn't just hand her ass to her on a silver platter. According to him, he's a Biology major and a freshman at Rutgers New Brunswick University- which begs the question of what the hell he's doing at _this_ internship, since practically nothing on this expedition has anything to do with Marine Biology, let alone Zoology or Entomology, which is what he wants to work in.

The expedition's official name is RU-27-Rutgers. Privately, the team calls her Scarlet. Her mission is to be the first remotely-operated Gilder to make it across the Atlantic ocean. Callie is nearly drooling when Dr. Suttwell explains it to her and Peter at orientation. This job is like a dream come true for her.

She's been selected because of her computer-coding skills. Peter? Well... That seems to be the million dollar question.

 _("You don't like me."_

 _The question comes out of nowhere. Callie and Peter are on a coffee run for the mostly-absent-minded Doctor, and Callie raises an eyebrow at the sudden question._

 _"What gave you that idea?" she asks._

 _"You've been biting your lip at me all day," he tells her with a shrug, "and narrowing your eyes and frowning and-"_

 _"Wow," Callie interrupts, "so you pay a lot of attention to weird things. Okay. One, no. I don't_ not _like you. Two, I've just been trying to figure out what you're doing at this internship, since you aren't really an Oceanography person."_

 _Peter shrugs again. They're waiting in line at Starbucks (and Callie thought she had enough of that when she was here with Tony), and there's not really much else to do except talk to each other. It's also very hot, and Callie finds herself wondering, for the millionth time, why the Doctor wants an extra-hot black coffee, and why he's wearing a sweater and jeans to work today._

 _"Doc and I are close," he tells her. They're third in line now. Callie can see the barista adding whipped cream to the Head Engineer, Jaimie Marks', frappucino. "He went to school with my Uncle Ben. I knew him growing up, and I figured this would be a cool internship, so he let me come on board."_

 _Callie narrows her eyes at him- again. After almost a year of living with Tony and his constant fortune-cookie act, she's grown very adept at figuring out when people are lying to her and/or avoiding telling the truth. Peter has just done a little bit of both._

 _What the hell is going on here?)_

As strange as Peter is- and as strange as the Doctor is ("Doc," he insists she call him)- the internship is even better than Callie could have imagined.

The expedition is only in its first few stages, and as of now, Scarlet is only a motor engine and a few wires, surrounded with bits and pieces of what will eventually be a bright yellow shell. That first day, Callie divides her time between coffee and lunch runs, learning the rules, and helping Jerry, the computer coder, with creating the right program for Scarlet, and a GPS chip/ tracking device that will last for the entire journey.

Peter is grunt labor. This seems to involve a lot of running around and having orders barked at him. When he's not doing that, he's leaning over Callie's shoulder and being a general nuisance.

He's her first friend at college.

That night he takes her to a hole-in-the-wall Japanese place where he introduces her to his only other friends, Gwen and Harry. It's there, while Harry flirts with her shamelessly and Gwen constantly punches him in the arm, while Peter stuffs his face with fried rice and tries to gross Callie out with raw squid, that Callie falls in love with New York City.

If she feels a sharp pang in her stomach every time she thinks about Tony and the mess he's gotten all of them into, she doesn't let it show.

* * *

"The kid sounds like a dweeb to me."

It's her second day alone in New York, and she's having her daily phone-call with Tony. It's her break hour, and she's sitting in Doc's office (per his mumbled request), with her feet propped up on his desk, and Peter sitting on top of a file cabinet, stuffing his face with the pizza they've ordered.

Callie sends Peter a quizzical glance (he grins at her over the pizza box and straightens his glasses), and sighs. "He is," she tells Tony. "He's a photographer for a Brooklyn newspaper, spends most of his time talking about bugs, and eats way too much for someone who weighs one-hundred pounds soaking wet."

"Don't forget to tell him how charming I am!" Peter whisper-yells at her. She stoically ignores him.

There's a loud crashing sound from Tony's line, and she hears him yelp, as well as JARVIS' voice saying something probably-sarcastic.

"Everything alright over there?" she asks, because loud bangs are just a fact of life in the Stark household, and differentiating between good-crashes and bad-crashes is nearly impossible.

"Define 'alright'," a breathless Tony replies.

Callie stifles a chuckle, rolls her eyes (Peter watches her with raised eyebrows from the file cabinet), and tugs on a curl. "As in, are you still-"

"Yes," Tony answers immediately. There's another loud crash and a screech of metal. "I am still dying. However"- he draws it out, there's another screech- "I may or may not have found a cure. And by that I mean that I have. Well, not _found_ it, per say. Dad- my dad, not me, as in your dad- had all these plans for a new element in the original blueprints for the Expo, which Pepper had when I snuck out to go see her..."

Callie zones out around now. Tony is using twisty-logic again, and he's in that weird, half-manic, half-insane mood he gets in when he's working. She usually avoids him around this time, but sometimes he needs to talk it out with someone, you know, _living_ (Read: not JARVIS), and she's gotten fairly good at listening without really understanding.

"So, things are alright?" she clarifies after ten minutes of run-on sentences and various yelps and smashing noises.

"Sort of," Tony answers simply. "And you're staying safe?"

Callie sighs heavily and leans even further back in the Doc's rolly chair. Her eyes squeeze tightly shut and she tugs on another curl. "Yes," she finally answers, a little grudgingly. "Although why you're so freaked out right now, I have no idea. Vanko's _dead_ , Tony. He's not going to be coming after me any time soon. So unless you want me to get the Ghost busters to guard my dorm room, there's not much I can be doing to defend myself."

Tony sniffs and mutters something under his breath. "You know what I'm talking about," he replies sourly. "I've just got a bad feeling, kid."

"I know. I'll be careful."

They both sigh heavily, and she can practically see him right now: covered head to toe in grease with safety goggles pushed up over unwashed hair and a wrench in one hand while he screws something into place. Callie misses him a lot in that moment.

Tony is the one who breaks the silence this time. "Are you going with Pepper and Nat- Natalie to the Expo tomorrow night?" he asks.

Callie grumbles under her breath, mood immediately souring, and swings her legs off of the Doc's desk. Peter shoots her a quizzical glance. "No," Callie answers darkly, "I am not. I'll go to dinner with them, but there is no way in hell I am going to go watch Hammer-the-ass-goblin try to one-up you at your own convention."

"Yeesh, kid. Language!"

"You _taught_ me that phrase!"

* * *

It takes Peter a little bit to get a good read on Callie, but when he does, she's pretty easy to figure out.

Callie Watson, as grudging and sarcastic and determined as she can be, is just a scared little girl at heart. Sure, she'll pretend not to care about people and act like she can't give a shit, but Peter (and everyone else on the team) notices her eyes light up every other minute, how she responds to everything Doc says with the rapt attention of someone talking to their idol, and the quiet ways she cares for people- like when she gets people's coffee orders down to grain of sugar, and how she's constantly cleaning up Jerry and the Doc's messes.

She cares. Really, really cares. And Peter and the team grow to care for her in return very quickly, even if she doesn't quite realize it- because, really, she's about as thick-headed as an ox.

The scared part is a bit harder to catch on to. Peter doesn't even realize it until day three of the internship, when the TV perpetually playing the Discovery Network in the lab is interrupted for an emergency news broadcast, stating that the Stark Expo just outside of New Brunswick is being attacked, and at the head of the defense is Tony Stark himself.

Before anyone else even registers what's happening, Callie is gone.

* * *

The taxi driver can't fathom why Callie wants him to take her into the middle of a veritable war zone, and isn't exactly keen on the idea until she presents him with her entire food budget for the month of August in cash (it's only about fifty dollars, but the stack of paper looks impressive), and tells him that he can keep the change if he can get her to the Expo in ten minutes. The drive takes five.

She stumbles out of the cab and throws a wad of bills at the drivers face.

"Hey, kid!" he yells at her back as she dashes across the curb and up the steps to the main building. "Be careful, alright?"

Callie waves vaguely at him over her shoulder and fights her way through a throng of people trying to get as far away from the Expo as they can. Over her head, she can see Tony going to town on what looks like a swarm of androids.

 _The fuck?_

Okay, so he was right. Something bad _was_ coming.

Getting to the main stage doors is like trying to swim through a rapid. The current is steadily against her, and the only way to get through it involves a lot of jabbing elbows into people's sides and dodging flailing limbs. Callie doesn't quite miss one of them and is clocked across the face. Her left eye is red and watering by the time she makes it back stage, and the sight causes Pepper to let out a scream of shock when Callie catches up to her, Natalie, and Happy.

"Oh my God!" Pepper shrieks, cold hands flying to Callie's face. "What happened- _Why are you here_?"

"I can help," Callie insists, waving her off and leading the way back down the hall, heart threatening to pound its way out of her heaving chest. When she sees the incredulous expression on Happy's face, she adds: " _Really._ Hammer's robot-things were hacked, right?"

It's Natalie who understands what Callie's hinting at first (she's a computer-person. She can do this), and Natalie nods with a slight grin overtaking her sharp features. "Alright then," she says, far too calm for anyone in this situation to be. "Miss Potts, Callie, try and take the hacker down from here. Happy, come with me."

Callie, understandably, can't quite figure out why Natalie is suddenly acting exactly like Coulson, and when she turns to ask Pepper, the other woman just waves her off with an "I'll tell you later".

Hammer isn't happy to see them, but they aren't happy to see Hammer. In fact, when he tries to get them to leave, Callie is almost sure she hears him call them "bitches". So she tells him he's an asshole and pushes past him and one of three gigantic bodyguards to sit down at the computer and try to take down the bazillion firewalls cloaking the main source of the transmitter.

Those thirty minutes are some of the most stressful Callie has ever been through, and Hammer's constant needling at her doesn't help in the slightest. Finally, ( _finally_ ) she manages to scramble the hacker's defenses and pull up the control panel he's operating from.

Her eyes widen. "Hammer," she mutters, strained, "would you like to explain why this server's name is _Ivan Vanko_ -"

Callie's voice fades, choked off by the large hand currently gripping her shoulder, fingers digging harshly into the junction of her collarbone. The bodyguard's face is impassive, and Callie winces, forced lower and lower and lower with every passing second. Pepper looks partly astonished and partly enraged, but before she can say a word, Callie is acting, almost without thought.

Her sneaker hooks around the leg of the rolling chair she's sitting in, and she flips it out from under her. She pitches forward and down, the bodyguard thrown off balance, hand loosening, and then she's back on her feet and grabbing _his_ shoulders. Thrusting him out and away from her. He falls into the bank of computers, collapsing it, and then another one is coming at her- Callie butts this one in the stomach with her shoulder- He flips and joins his friend on the floor- Her hands grab at his gun as he falls-

And then she has Hammer at gun point, and she's breathing heavy, and her eyes are bright, and _Oh my God did she just do that_ -?

"You have a lot of explaining to do, Hammer," she tells him.

True, she has no idea how on Earth to shoot a gun, but he doesn't need to know that.

* * *

No one ever really gets out of "problem days" without a few injuries, even if they aren't exactly noticeable at first. (See: Pepper, who looks unscathed but has harsh, black and red bruises running up and down the length of her back and all across her shoulders.) And while her actions tonight weren't exactly on par with breaking glass with her bare hands or being kidnapped by the Joker, Callie's still pretty beat up.

The bodyguard's grip on her shoulder burst a blood vessel, and the skin there is splotchy and gross-looking. Also it feels like something is pinching her really, really hard, and she can't move that arm very well right now. There are scratches and bleeding cuts all across her bare legs (she needs to stop wearing skirts so much), and somehow, she managed to scrape her forehead all the way from the temples across her right eyebrow.

Surprisingly enough, the least injured out of all of them is Tony. In fact, he's in better shape than he was the last time Callie saw him.

"So, it's gone?" she presses excitedly, wincing as she dabs an alcohol-soaked cotton swab onto her skinned knee. "The radiation poisoning- you got rid of it?"

Tony nods, distracted, that _OhmigodPepper_ look on his face, and she knows he's thinking about the kiss she and Rhodie witnessed (unfortunately).

"Mm," he hums, methodically rubbing the gauze wrapped around a burn on his shoulder. "Yeah- uh, new element, Coulson and _Super Nanny_ and a taser and-" He frowns here and looks at her- no, looks _through_ her- looks at her the same way he looks at blueprints for a new suit. "Pepper told me about you and Hammer. Where the hell did you learn how to do that, kid?"

Callie grins sheepishly- _sheepishly_. _She doesn't do sheepish_.

"Natalie," she finally answers, and Tony feels the need to punch something again. "She saw that Happy's methods weren't working and decided to- Why are you looking at me like that?"

* * *

Natalie Rushman's real name is Natasha Romanoff.

For some reason, when Tony explains it to her, Callie believes it immediately. It just makes so much sense. The way Natalie- _Natasha-_ is always so much in control of herself and so God damn confident, and why she always seems to know exactly what to say to Callie, almost like she has some kind of dossier on her. This, of course, begs the question of whether Nat- Natasha actually likes Callie, or if she's just being paid to like her.

She gets the opportunity to find out very, very soon.

Walking in on three people in her dorm room isn't the most shocking thing that's ever happened to her, but she lets out a scream and tries to taze one of them anyway.

It turns out to be Coulson.

He isn't too happy with her.

"Is this about paper work?" Callie demands after having Tony's "improved" taser ripped out of her hands and tossed out the window for a frat boy to find. "Because I haven't really had a chance to to even look at it yet but I promise I'll-"

"No, Miss Watson," an amused voice tells her and- _Holy shit. Yeah, that's Nick Fury_. "This is not about paperwork."

"Then what is it?"

Fury clears his throat and then looks at her- _really looks at her_. He looks at her the way Pepper looks at Tony sometimes, like she's trying to figure out how best to control him. Then Fury glances away, glances at Nat- Natasha, who is sitting on Callie's bed, and says, "How would you feel about working for us?"

* * *

Callie isn't quite sure what she's expecting to happen after Fury's very, very shocking announcement, but having N-Natasha walk around campus with her and explain things better isn't it.

Callie Watson is not secret agent material. She isn't sexy or mysterious, and black is her least favorite color. She likes stability and beaches and hanging out with Pepper and her dad. And she doesn't like violence- even if the empowerment rushing through her veins whenever she learns a new fighting move is addicting, and even if she will never forget how it felt to finally be able to protect herself and not have to rely on Tony to save her.

Okay, yes. Maybe she _did_ enjoy saving the day (sort of) for once. But that doesn't mean she wants to uproot her entire life to work for S.H.I.E.L.D.

Natasha doesn't say anything to her for what feels like a long time, and they're halfway across the quad before one of them speaks. It's Callie.

"I don't want to do..." She motions at Natasha's lithely muscled form and the sharp curve of her jaw. " _This._ I'm not giving up everything I've worked for to be a mini-Coulson."

Nat stares at her in that amused way, lips puckered slightly and icy eyes warming the tiniest bit. "I don't want you to."

This makes Callie stop short. An irritated senior walking behind them runs into her back, curses, and then storms past them. Both women ignore him and continue to stare at each other.

"I'm sorry, _what_?" Callie says. "Aren't you supposed to be blackmailing or threatening me or something right now?"

Nat smiles this time, and it's both heart-warming and chilling at the same time. "I guess," she says, "but I'm not going to."

"Oh, okay." Callie nods, stuffing her hands into the pockets of her shorts. "Uh... why?"

Nat just shakes her head, and she's very far away then, miles away from New Brunswick and sunshine and Callie Watson. "It changes you," she finally says, "turns you into a different person. You wouldn't like the person you'd become. I'm not sure I would like her very much, either."

Callie nods again (she's getting sick of doing that), and tugs on a curl. She doesn't mention how much she likes fighting or how she's entwined in the mess that is S.H.I.E.L.D. because Tony is too. She doesn't mention that she'll always be in danger, like it or not, because she's chosen to stand by Tony's side. She doesn't mention that she's hungering for that rush- for seeing Hammer turned over to the police and seeing justice done.

She doesn't mention it, but she does tell Coulson that she's not interested in being a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent (the "not right now, anyway" is implied). But when he suggests she consult with them instead, she agrees.

In hindsight, maybe she shouldn't have.

* * *

 **A/N: Words cannot describe how much I dislike this chapter. I feel like it makes Callie out to be a total Mary Sue, which I hate, and I'm definitely going to be going back and changing it once everything is said and done, but I figured you've all been waiting for it long enough, so here you go. As usual, thank you for reading, and leave a review if you feel like it! (Also a belated Happy Holidays/ Happy New Year!)**


	11. The Consultant

**Devil's Promise**  
 **Chapter 8: The Consultant**

 **A/N: This chapter is dedicated to Hurricane.'97, who reminded me that I didn't write Callie with the goal of not making her a Mary Sue- I wrote her so she would be a good character. Thank you so much, and I really hope you enjoy.**

Callie Watson meets Spiderman two weeks into the first semester of her first year at college, and two weeks into her first encounter with hell on Earth. Which may be just her exaggerating how much her situation totally and entirely sucks, but still. Whatever.

The truth is, Callie doesn't exactly... fit in at Rutgers. It's sort of like when Blair Waldorf went to NYU for a year and had the worst time of her life, only Callie is from Malibu, not the Upper East Side, and she actually really, really likes her school and the people in it, she just doesn't know how to talk to anyone there.

This is different from Spade, when everyone grew up together so everyone already knew each other and everyone knew how to deal with Callie's neurotic tendencies and her bad habit of talking about engineering/computer-coding/oceanography. It's different from Harvard Westlake, too, where her friends were the girls on the cheer squad and the boys who were friends with the girls on the cheer squad. But there are no cheer squads at Rutgers New Brunswick University, and the only person she's known here for longer than the four months she's been in New York is Doc, and he's her _boss_ , so he doesn't really, technically count.

There's Peter, of course, but Peter is... Well, he's Peter- all sarcasm and grins and awkward pats on the back and so much like Tony that it physically hurts Callie sometimes. The problem is that Peter is a _guy_ , and Callie's never really had guy friends before. She likes to think that she's a girly girl, and she likes going shopping with Pepper and Natasha and talking about whether or not pink really does clash with red hair or what the best way to seduce a man before killing him is.

She can't talk about any of those things with Peter.

And despite her sporadic fighting lessons with Natasha, and despite her weekly S.H.I.E.L.D consultant training with Coulson and a dark-haired agent named Ward, and despite her daily phone calls with Tony, and despite the success of her internship and the overall amazingness of what she's learning every day, Callie is very, very lonely.

She misses Malibu and Pepper and Rhodie and JARVIS and Happy. But most of all, she misses her dad.

This, naturally, does not make for a very happy Callie, the tall girl scowling down at Scarlet as she methodically places copper wires into the body of the AUV and twists them together. Peter stares at her in concern over her shoulder, sipping on her now-cold Chai tea.

"Do you want to talk, or something?" he asks slowly.

"Or something," Callie responds, knowing from experience that she's overwhelmingly awful at anything that has to do with expressing her feelings.

And that is when things- as they always seem to do when Callie is in the vicinity of them- go terribly, horribly wrong.

It's fairly late on a Wednesday night and aside from Callie and Peter, the only people still at the lab that night are Doc Suttwell and his wife/receptionist, Polly. The other staff-members all have actual lives outside of work, and have left hours ago. Callie was too bitter about the I-have-no-friends thing to follow them, so stayed behind to keep working on Scarlet with Peter keeping watch.

Glass shatters from the general direction of the lobby, and Peter and Callie straighten up immediately, both of them wide awake.

"What was-?" Peter begins.

Callie shakes her head at him. "I'll go check."

She methodically pulls her hair into a bun, keeping it off of her face and out of reach of potential attackers, tugging a wrench free from underneath the clutter on her work table as an afterthought, in case she needs a weapon. She can feel Peter's scared eyes on the back of her neck as she moves out of the work room. Callie is scared, too, she's just a lot better at hiding it than he is.

The long, white-washed brick and cement hallway is eerie. Callie can still hear noises from the lobby, muted voices that rise in pitch, indicating the owners of them aren't exactly happy. She resists the urge to run forward, not wanting to let potential enemies know she's coming.

It's when she passes one of the store rooms that she's grabbed and yanked inside.

A hand slams against her mouth before she can scream, and if Callie weren't so confused about the fact that she's just been pseudo-kidnapped by a man in a stretchy red suit, she would have kneed him in the crotch already. In the mean time, she pushes his hand away from her mouth, forces distance between the two of them and demands, "Who the fuck are you?"

She thinks the wannabe-super-hero blinks at her, but she can't be really sure. He clears his throat, squares his shoulders and says in a trying-to-be-macho voice, "I'm your friendly neighborhood Spiderman."

Now she really wants to punch the guy, because _the hell kind of name is Spiderman?-_ and also a voice that sounds suspiciously like Polly's has just screamed and Callie really doesn't want the Suttwells to die because they're such a nice couple and also _hello, Doc is her idol_ -

 _Spiderman_ has heard the scream too, it seems. His head whips around in the direction of it, and he starts toward the door to the storeroom before pausing, glancing back at Callie, and saying, "Sorry about this, ma'am. Can't have you getting in the way and hurting yourself."

"The hell are you talking about-?" Callie begins to say, but the man is gone and when she goes to follow him, she finds that her hand is stuck to the wall with some kind of sticky white stuff-

 _Shit._

 _Is that a spider web?_

* * *

Callie Watson is really pissed off.

And when she's pissed off, she's distracted.

Natasha takes advantage of this fact during their spar and round house kicks her in the face.

"Shit!" Callie growls into the floor of the sparring ring, head ringing with the force of the blow.

Natasha stares down at her in concern, an expression Callie has not often seen on the beautiful woman's face. "Are you alright?" she asks as Callie finally gets to her feet, brushing sweaty strands of hair away from her eyes.

Callie just shrugs, tightening her ponytail. "I don't know," she says honestly, because Natasha sees through lies very easily, she's found. "Something happened last Wednesday- I don't-" She groans again and flops down into a sitting position, rubbing at her eyes with hands that smell like salt and blood. "What do you know about some guy named Spiderman?"

Natasha stiffens just the slightest bit. Before training with Coulson, Callie wouldn't have noticed it. The Russian woman frowns and seats herself across from Callie, albeit more gracefully than the younger girl had. Nat's face is almost completely free of any sweat, and Callie finds herself envying her, not for the first time.

"What do _you_ know about Spiderman?" Natasha replies softly.

Callie frowns, fingers tugging at a curl that's fallen loose from her ponytail. "I met him Wednesday night," she divulges. "Something happened at my internship... I'm still not sure what, actually, but he was there and apparently he saved the day. He locked me in the store room, though."

She flushes at the memory, not proud of the fact that she'd been rescued nearly an hour later by a very confused Polly who had heard her yells and pried the webs away from her hand.

A raised eyebrow is all the reaction Natasha gives her story, but she says, a moment later, "Let me know if you see him again. S.H.I.E.L.D has been searching for this kid for a while now."

"Why?" is all Callie says, since she has only like, level two security clearance here, and she's not on the payroll or anything, and there's really not much Natasha's allowed to tell her. (She knows a lot more than she's supposed to, though, being Tony's adoptive daughter and all.)

Natasha rolls her neck in a circle, cracking it, and gets to her feet, holding out a hand to help Callie up. "He's an unregistered super," Natasha explains. "Coulson and Fury want to get a hold of him just to keep track of him in case he... Well, turns out to not be much of a hero."

Callie opens her mouth to ask the inevitable question ( _Does that happen often_?) but Natasha is swinging at her before she can, saying, "Back to work, Callie. Try the Cheat 720 twist. Forty repetitions!"

* * *

You could say that Callie is proud of Tony.

No, scratch that. You can bet your ass that Callie is proud as fuck of her father!

Her chest swells with pride as she watches Tony and Rhodie accept their hard-earned medals of valor- from _Senator Stern_ no less! He looks positively sick as he presents the awards to the two men, and Callie has to stifle a laugh at a glare from Pepper, who stares pointedly at her from their seats together at the ceremony.

It's nice to have the government on their side for once, Callie reflects as the shining medal is pinned to the lapel of Tony's suit, but it's even nicer to be with her family again. She's missed them a lot, more than she thought she would, and being back together feels like that hole in her heart is filling again. Tony's taken notice; she can tell. The hug he gave her when her plane touched down in Washington DC was an extra long one, despite the fact that it's only been about two weeks since the last time they saw each other.

Albeit, the last time wasn't exactly a happy occasion, what with Vanko and Hammer and the killer droids and all. But still. It really hasn't been that long.

It _feels_ like it has, though.

Callie supposes that she's gotten so used to Tony's constant presence in her life that she can't imagine living without him. It's a humbling realization, and she knows if he ever heard her say it he would be cockier and smarmier than usual for _weeks_ , but it's true. She doesn't think she'd be able to handle a world without Tony in it, and God has she missed him.

She's dwelling on this fact nearly two hours later. They're at the celebratory banquet at the actual, honest-to-God _White House_ , so Callie actually looks presentable for the first time since school started in a floral, Zang Toi dress with pale pink pumps.

She's glad for it, too, considering she's _seated next to frickin' Michelle Obama_ who it turns out is more of a bad ass than Pepper and her mother combined, and that's definitely saying something. Whether or not the first lady is more kick ass than Natasha, Callie isn't sure. She doesn't know either of the women well enough to come to a conclusion in that regard, but she makes an educated guess that they're on equal levels.

Still, super impressive.

Pepper and Mrs. Obama have been talking for hours, and Callie can see why. They have quite a fair bit in common, and she has a feeling Mrs. Obama will soon be joining Pepper's frequently-growing list of odd lunch dates. Callie can't say she'll mind this addition. Mrs. Obama is fun and spunky and Callie enjoyed talking to her. Maybe she can tag along once in a while, like she does whenever Coulson comes to Malibu.

Which reminds her. She's going on her first mission tomorrow.

Callie isn't sure if she feels excited or if she feels like she wants to throw up, but either way she's meeting with Coulson, Ward, and Fury at S.H.I.E.L.D.'s central headquarters tomorrow afternoon and heading out on her first consulting job.

Tony, as he tends to do, plops down in the seat across from her, champagne glass in hand and medal of honor glinting proudly on his lapel.

"You have your squishy-wrinkly-nose face on," he informs her, taking a sip of champagne and then frowning. He pulls an Iron Man flask (yes, they have started making those, much to Callie's chagrin), and continues: "You're nervous about something, aren't you?"

"What? No," Callie responds immediately, instinct trumping the fact that she's pretty sure Tony already has a good idea what's going on with her.

" _What? No_ ," Tony mimics in that squeaky, girly voice he uses when he wants to get on her nerves. "Oh, bull _shit_ , kid. You're doing something for Fury's little secret agent play team, aren't you?"

"How-?"

"I have eyes everywhere, kid." Tony takes another swig from the flask (Rhodie eyes him unhappily from across the room) and tilts his chair dangerously onto two legs. " _Everywhere_."

Callie snorts unhappily at him and crosses her arms over her chest. "If those 'eyes' mean that you've hacked all the security cams around campus and use them to spy on me I'm going to _murder_ you-"

"What on Earth would make you think I'd do something like that, kid? That's totally and completely illegal and frankly I am wounded that you think so little of me."

He's only saying this because Pepper, the First Family, and the Attorney DA are all within earshot, and both of them know it.

Callie can't pretend to be grumpy anymore; she's too happy to be play-bickering with her dad again to be able to. So she breaks character and giggles at him, grin growing broader when he slips his flask into her hands under the table cloth.

"So what's the dealio, kiddo?" Tony asks, keeping watch as Callie spikes her lemonade. "Fury got you stopping international jewel thieves or something? Because if so, I'm grounding you and taking over the mission for you."

She shoots him an actually surly look and takes a sip of her boozed-up drink. "You are _not_. And I don't know yet. They haven't told me anything, I'll find out tomorrow afternoon. But I really don't think I'm doing anything superhero-ish. The only combat training I've been getting is from Nat, and she's doing that off the clock. I'm just... consulting, or whatever."

"Consulting?" Tony smirks around the word. "That makes it sound like you're working for a law firm."

Callie shakes her head. "I don't _do_ office work, Tony. I'd tear my hair out if I had to do anything that boring."

"I know," Tony says. "Speaking of jobs, how's Doctor Suttwell doing? You haven't said much about college and all when you call. It's just me talking about the suits and Pepper and boring old Malibu."

The _you aren't happy tell me why so I can fix it_ is hidden, but still there.

"It's going good," Callie says immediately. "Actually, not it isn't. Not really- shit." She frowns into her glass. "I don't want to talk about it." She drains her drink and sets it down on the table, getting to her feet only a little unsteadily. "Let's just stop talking and dance."

Tony doesn't make the snarky comment he wants to ("Well yeesh, kid, if I'd known the way to get a daddy-daughter dance out of you was to just start talking about our feelings, I would've tried it ages ago"). He also doesn't say anything about how lonely Callie's eyes look and how sad her voice sounds whenever she talks about college. But he does decide that he's going to be making business trips to New York more often.

 _A lot_ more often.

* * *

If Callie lets the effects of her slight hangover show the next afternoon at S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters, Coulson, Ward, and Fury don't say anything about it. Of course, Fury is too busy glaring at her, Ward is too busy kissing his boss's ass, and Coulson is too busy smiling both pleasantly and creepily to leave any room for chit chat, but still.

"Here." Ward slaps two cards and a leather wallet down on the table in front of Callie. Upon further inspection, she sees a S.H.I.E.L.D. card identifying her as an Avengers Initiative Consultant, security clearance level 2, a scarily-realistic-looking fake ID that proclaims her to be twenty-one and named Missy Dartmouth, and an honest-to-God _badge_ like the ones she always sees in CIA movies.

"Your target is General Thaddeus 'Thunderbolt' Ross, recently suspended from active duty due to an incident involving a mutated scientist in Boston this past August." The picture placed in front of her is of a stern-looking man, all thick muscles and surly frown.

Coulson smiles at Callie with his eyes. "I'm sure Mr. Stark told you about the Incredible Hulk?"

Callie nods slowly, very aware of the fact that Fury's one eye is boring into the side of her face angrily. Apparently, she isn't supposed to know about Hulk. Or at least, Fury is the one who was supposed to tell her.

Ward draws himself up. His eyes keep flicking in Fury's direction. "Well, the Hulk is missing as of now, and good riddance, I say. But the General still has the other mutant involved in the incident in his custody- Emil Blonsky, the Abomination."

"Since you already seem to know about my Avengers Initiative," Fury snaps, with more than a little bit of frustration, "I'll let you in on a secret, Watson: I want the Abomination, and I want you to make Ross give him to me." He nods at the fake ID on the table. "He'll be at the Gibson bar tonight at nine. Do whatever you can to make him hand over the Abomination."

The _or else I'll kick your pansy ass out of S.H.I.E.L.D. myself_ is left unsaid.

* * *

"General Ross?"

The man at the bar glances up at Callie, fat cigar hanging between his teeth, looks her up and down, and then turns back to his beer. "Who the hell are you?"

Callie scowls at him and smacks his shoulder, waving her newly-acquired S.H.I.E.L.D. ID in his face. She doesn't, however, notice the fact that she's holding it upside down. "Callie Watson, S.H.I.E.L.D. consultant."

 _Damn_ does that feel weird to say.

General Ross snorts at her.

 _Snorts_ at her.

"What?" he mumbles into his beer. "They're hiring teenagers now? Figured Fury would have more gumption than that." He sighs heavily and finally turns around to face her. "What does he want?"

Resisting the urge to turn his tie into a noose and fling him forehead-first into the bar (a move Natasha has recently taught her), Callie takes a seat on the stool next to him, nearly choking on the smoke emanating from his cigar. "It's about what happened in August, with the-"

Ross raises a hand, stopping her in her tracks. "Yeah, I get it. Shoulda' known the freaks over at S.H.I.E.L.D. would be interested in Banner." He puts out his cigar right on the wooden counter, attracting a glare from the bar tender. It leaves behind a perfectly round scorch mark. "Unfortunately for Fury, I don't know where he is." Ross makes a shooing motion in Callie's direction, royally pissing her off. "Now goodbye."

Callie's changed her mind. She won't do the tie-noose thing. Instead, she'll elbow him off of his bar stool and jam the heels of her boots right into his eyes. Nowhere that will leave permanent damage, just in that perfect spot between cornea and socket to momentarily incapacitate and make him hurt like the little bitch he is.

"It's about the Abomination, actually," she says instead, because she doesn't think she'd like getting yelled at by Ward very much.

Much to Callie's satisfaction, Ross looks stunned. The now-unlit cigar falls right out of his mouth and onto the disgusting floor of the bar. Before he can say another word, the door opens, and the last voice Callie wants to hear at this point in time calls out, "I smell smoke and defeat. Thaddeus, is that you?"

The expression on General Ross's face is murderous. Callie's matches it. "T-" she begins to growl, but Ross beats her to it.

"Stark!" he barks. "The hell are you doing here?"

Tony has reached them at the bar. He's wearing the sunglasses Callie gave him for Christmas, despite the fact that it's eleven at night and he's indoors. He reaches over to tousle her hair, mussing it all up. Callie wants to punch him but doesn't.

"Just visiting my daughter," Tony replies all _what a coincidence, huh?_ Almost like he _isn't_ ruining whatever chance Callie has at somewhat of a future with S.H.I.E.L.D.

Ross looks at Callie with new eyes, and she _knows_ that look. That's the _oh you're_ that _Callie Watson_ look. The one that means people are going to start treating her different. She _hates_ that look.

"Since when have you had a _daughter_ , Stark?"

"Since a year ago when he adopted me," Callie replies, noticeably grumpy. " _Tony_ ," she whines, "you're _ruining_ my first assignment."

"I wouldn't say ruining," Tony replies. "I'm making it better, more interesting. You're learning to think on your feet and deal with interruptions-"

"Annoyances," Callie corrects, feeling sufficiently shoved aside for the circus act that is Tony Stark. "Now, General Ross, about the Abomination-"

"That thing?" Tony intones again, and now Callie is thinking that maybe she could swipe his glasses and shove them down his throat. Not enough to choke him, exactly, but enough to shut him up for a little bit. "The one that destroyed half of Harlem a month ago? Why does Fury want him in the boy band?"

"What boy band?" Ross asks.

"It's not a boy band!" Callie says shrilly. "It's a super secret team of superheroes and spies and- God _damn it,_ Tony!"

* * *

Two in the morning the next day finds all three of them in a jail cell at the local precinct.

"I hate you," Callie says decidedly, and she can physically _feel_ the weight of the bags under her eyes at this point. "And I'm serious about it this time. I really, really hate you."

Tony just frowns at her. His hands are twitching every couple of seconds, which means he's late for his hourly caffeine fix. "No you don't. Fury wouldn't want the Abomination anyways. The thing is literally an Abomination. And Ross is a dick, too."

Callie doesn't say anything. She kind of wants to cry, actually. Because this was her chance and she _blew_ it.

Maybe, she thinks, if she'd been able to get Tony out of there fast enough, Ross wouldn't have made a crack about Armani suits. And maybe Tony wouldn't have made a crack about whiny government bitches who try to kill their daughter's fiances. And maybe Ross wouldn't have punched Tony in the face. And maybe Tony wouldn't have smashed a glass over Ross' head.

And maybe the three of them wouldn't be in holding cells right now.

Ross, for his part, has been silent for the past few hours, due to the fact that he is passed out (and snoring very loudly) on the cot in his and Tony's cell. Tony is leaned up against the bars between him and Callie's space, as far away from the violent general as he can get. He's also sporting a nasty-looking black eye, and Callie winces whenever she looks at it. She doesn't like seeing her dad hurt.

But Tony doesn't like seeing his daughter hurt, either.

"You're not enjoying college so far," he says very suddenly, "are you, kid?"

And just like that, Callie deflates like a punctured balloon, sinking down to sit on her cot, lower lip trembling in the way it does before she's about to cry. Because she's still only eighteen, and she's still Callie- the Callie that _isn't_ grumpy all the time, and usually makes friends very easily, and was so God damn excited for Rutgers and New York and Doctor Alexander Suttwell...

But it's nothing like how she thought it was going to be, and that makes Callie, dumbly enough, sad.

Very sad.

"No," she whispers. "I'm really not."

She looks very young right now, almost like a kicked puppy, and if Tony could hug her, he would.

"Aw damn, kid. I didn't mean to make you cry," he says awkwardly, because she _is_ crying, and it's really, really embarrassing.

"I didn't _mean_ to cry!" Callie practically wails, nearly waking up Ross and the police officer who is supposed to be guarding them until their bail money comes through. "I feel- I feel so stupid and childish and-"

"You still _are_ a child," Tony tells her, realizing the truth in his words as he says them. Because she is just a child, a child who lost her mom a little less than a year ago, who's been putting up with all the Iron Man bullshit for him, who is burdened with a genius's brain in an eighteen year old's hormonal head, and who is already being recruited by the scariest organization on Earth to do life-threatening work for them.

Callie's been through a lot. It's no wonder she's been so upset lately. She sort of has a right to be.

So as he talks his daughter through the first nervous break down she's had since learning about Obadiah Stane almost a year ago, and as Coulson finally shows up to bail them out, and as Ross very firmly tells them there's no way in hell he's letting the Abomination join the Avengers, and as Coulson explains that they never wanted the Abomination in the first place and he only had Callie do the consulting thing because he knew Tony would come and royally fuck the whole thing up-

Well, you get the idea.

Tony's mind is anywhere but in the present. Instead he's toying with ideas for a brand spanking new Stark Industries headquarters in New York City, the likes of which will make Donald Trump shit his pants with jealousy.

If Callie can't find happiness in New York City, then Tony will just come along and make some for her.

* * *

 **A/N: Hey howdy my loves! I figured I'd let you know that the rest of the month of May and all of June will be dedicated entirely to Devil's Promise. I definitely won't be finishing anytime soon (there's still a shit ton of plot to get through), but you can probably expect me to get to at least the events of** _ **The Avengers**_ **before I switch back to the Damsel in Distress Diaries. Anyway, I sincerely hope you enjoyed this chapter, and please leave a review below if you feel so inclined!**


	12. Q and A!

**Devil's Promise**  
 **Frequently Asked Questions and Author's Note!**

So, obviously, this isn't a chapter, although chapter 9 will be coming out very soon, and it's a good one so far, so don't fret!

Alright, here are some frequently asked questions in regards to this story, as well as a quick update on where it's headed. This isn't a necessary note to read, but you're welcome to if you feel so inclined.

* * *

 **Q:** Why did Pepper make Tony adopt Callie in the first place?

 **A:** Originally, I planned to explain this in a fight between Tony and Callie that never happened, so I will be going back and editing this in, but the truth is, Callie was one-hundred-percent a ploy for good press following Tony's return from Afghanistan. The whole "let me adopt the daughter of this person who died for me" type thing. In the original draft of this story it was guilt on Tony's part, which I like a bit better so might end up being the motivation behind it later in the story. Either way, the exclusion of this was bad exposition on my part and will be corrected heavily in the editing stages.

 **Q:** What happened to Callie's biological dad, and will he be making any appearances?

 **A:** No, Callie's birth-dad isn't dead. His name is Harold Maynor, and he's a huge asshole that abandoned Callie's mom when he found out she was pregnant. He refused to accept legal responsibility for Callie after Erica Watson's death, and therefor has no claim on her. Yes, he will be coming back. Originally he was supposed to resurface during _Iron Man 2_ and go to court for custody of Callie to add more drama to the whole thing, but I felt like that might be too much so scrapped the idea. However, you can expect to see him somewhere around _Iron Man 3_. I won't be explaining any more of that, however, as his story line has quite a few surprises in it that I refuse to spoil here.

 **Q:** Will there be any more DC crossovers?

 **A:** Nah, man. I was thinking about including the Justice League somewhere during the original draft of this story, and since it's already established that the Marvel and DC universes exist simultaneously in this story it could certainly happen, but I've found that readers prefer to keep the two universes separate, and at the moment, so do I. I'm not a huge fan of the latest DC movies, and don't get a lot of inspiration from them, so this isn't likely to change. However, if I get the opportunity, Wayne and Grayson might resurface at some point, but any other DC characters aren't likely to make an appearance.

 **Q:** How many OC's _are_ you planning on having in this story?

 **A:** Alright, so this story is definitely _Callie and Tony's story._ They and their relationship are the main point of it, but for the sake of this gigantic, super in depth plot I'm developing (just wait for it), I've had to include a few new OC's. You've already met both Sunday and Katherine, and as of now, they are the only other OC's you need to worry about. Just a few quick clues, Katherine will be hugely important to Bucky and Steve's character development, and Sunday will be important on Steve and Loki's behalf. I know all of the interludes can be confusing right now, but please bear with me. I know what I'm doing.

 **Q:** Speaking of Loki, how big of a presence is he going to be in this?

interacting with them a good bit later on in the story. Loki and Callie will eventually have a lot of screen time together, which I am very excited to write. I think you can guess what conversations between the two of them are going to be like.

 **Q:** What about romantic interests for Callie?

 **A:** Oh jeez, isn't that the question? Callie's romantic interests have gone through quite a few changes over planning and drafting for this, and I'll try to explain this as easily as I can... _No_ , Callie and Loki are absolutely _not_ going to be romantically interested in each other. The age difference would be insane and frankly they would probably try to kill each other. No, Callie and Bucky and/or Steve aren't going to be a thing, either. You can pretty much cross any of the original Avengers off of the list. The age/maturity gap is just too big for me.

Originally, Callie was supposed to be with Spiderman, but I tried writing a few scenes out between them and didn't like it. However, when I first decided to include Deadpool in the story, I enjoyed the way I was going to write his interactions with Callie, and one thing lead to another and well...

Yeah.

Keep in mind that all of this was planned _way_ before _Deadpool_ even came out, so no, the events of the movie aren't going to appear in the fic, and his character is going to be slightly different from the one portrayed on screen. Sorry to disappoint you on that note.

 **Q** : You've been talking a lot about the original plans you had for this story. What were they?

 **A:** Long story short, originally this story _started_ with _The Avengers_ and was meant to be an OC/Loki story, but I ended up liking the idea of a father/daughter relationship that was building between Tony and a different character (that eventually turned into Callie), and ended up scrapping that idea and coming up with _Devil's Promise._

 **Q:** So how are the events of _The Avengers_ going to go down?

 **A:** That, my friend, is the biggest surprise of them all, and there's not much I can tell you in that respect without giving away a shit ton of spoilers. All you really need to know is that, _no_ , Callie is not joining the team. She's still fairly young when all of this happens and like hell Fury is going to let a nineteen/twenty year old join his squad. (Also like hell Tony is letting his daughter fight Loki.) She's still very involved in every thing that happens and gets her share of the action with a little bit of help from Spiderman and co.

 **Q:** And Spiderman?

 **A:** Eventually becomes a rather huge part of Callie's life. You'll begin to see where I'm going with this in the next chapter.

 **Q:** When will the other Avengers begin to make appearances?

 **A:** Well, since Callie is already getting trained by Natasha and Coulson, and she's already met Fury a couple of times, you can expect her to meet Clint for the first time fairly soon. (And by fairly soon I mean during the next chapter). Steve will still be making appearances through interludes with Sunday and Katherine, but Callie won't be meeting him or Bruce until the actual _Avengers._

* * *

So, I hope you enjoyed that, and if you have anymore questions, leave a review or send me a message, and you will probably be included in the next Q and A! I probably will not be posting chapter 9 this week, due to the fact that I'm graduating from high school and all on Saturday, but you can expect it within the next ten days or so!


	13. Evasive Maneuvers

**Devil's Promise**  
 **Chapter 9: Evasive Maneuvers  
**

In light of her recent misadventures with Tony and her first _fail-this-on-purpose_ mission, Callie decides that a little bit of optimism is in order.

 _("Hey Pete? Have you noticed anything... off about Callie tonight?"_

 _Peter looks up from the plate of spaghetti his Aunt May set in front of him a few minutes ago to stare at Harry, pasta sauce painting his chin red. "No. Why?"_

 _Harry shrugs, eyes following the red-haired girl around the room as she helps May and Gwen clean the kitchen, a smile on her face. "I don't know," he says. "She's acting different. All happy and peppy. It's weird."_

 _Eyes narrowed at his newfound best friend, Peter considers the girl and then decides that whatever's going on with her is her own business and she'll tell him when she's ready. "If she's happy then she's happy, Harry," he says simply. "It's better than her acting like a grump all the time.")_

Erica Watson used to say that if you pretend to be something for long enough, you'll become it. This concept seems to work for Callie, if only a little bit. October finds her a little better than she was when she first came to Tony, and a little better than she's been after his love and care and fathering bullshit.

God she loves that asshole.

She's found another person who fits that description (the lovable asshole one), she finds soon enough.

Peter Parker.

He's her best friend now, she guesses. The only one she's ever had, except for her mom and Tony and JARVIS and Pepper, but they're all parental figures so they don't count.

Peter is... weird, but she's known that for a few months now, so no surprise there. But he's weird in a way that no one she's known has been weird before. He's all calm and quiet and small and then out of nowhere he comes out with all this insanely smart stuff about animals and anatomy and how flamboyant cuttlefish (they're studying those right now) change colors to hypnotize their prey and does Callie know she looks kind of like a red-haired Blake Lively? Because she does.

That little tidbit of information leads to Callie dyeing her hair beach blonde. It looks good and Peter tells her as much.

Once again, weird guy.

He shows up to class and to the lab with bruises almost every other day. If Callie didn't know and love Aunt May so much, she'd worry he was being abused. As it is, Peter just blames them on being clumsy whenever she asks him, and based on the amount of spills he's had in the lab, she believes him.

Callie has bruises too, though, and hers are a bit harder to explain away considering she has a gymnast's reflexes and hasn't tripped over thin air since she was first learning how to walk.

Natasha is working her hard, harder than she's ever been worked in her life. But she's changing, and that's good. Callie is _changing._

There's the physical stuff, of course. She's lost the thirteen pounds she gained from the Stark-family diet (takeout and shit tons of omelettes), and her legs and arms are noticeably toned. She's also sporting the beginnings of a rather nice-looking set of abs, and she's lost all the baby fat she used to have around her cheeks and chin.

Callie can do some pretty fucking awesome things now- like dodge bullets with back flips and handsprings, and flip herself around on bars and rafters and window ledges and shit like that. Also, she's a black belt in Judo now, apparently. That was a weird day.

 _(The immense satisfaction Callie feels when she finally manages to smash Natasha's face into the sparing matt should scare Callie- if it didn't feel so amazing. She's been trying to do this for_ months _now, and this is the first spar that doesn't end with Callie's nose getting broken for the umpteenth time or her ribs cracked or her ankle twisted or-_

 _Well, you get the idea._

 _Callie lets out a breathy, panting whoop, springing to her feet and then leaning down to help Natasha up. The Russian woman bats her hand away and leaps up herself, throwing her legs up first and then letting their momentum launch the rest of her into a stand._

 _Natasha smiles at her._

 _"Congrats," she says simply, and then throws a strip of black fabric in Callie's face. "You've earned this, love.")_

It's not just the physical stuff, though. It's a mental thing, too.

Callie carries herself different now. Shoulders straighter, chin lifted higher. She stops critiquing things about her body that she doesn't like (freckles on her shoulders, stretch marks on her thighs, scars on her hands and ridiculously crooked nose), and starts focusing on the amazing things she's being trained to do.

Maybe this is why, the next time she and Peter and the Suttwells are working late at the lab and she hears glass shattering, she feels confident enough in her abilities to run headfirst into danger without any hesitation whatsoever.

Really, a dumb move on her part.

When she makes it to the lobby, Polly is being choked by something that looks like a man crossed with a floppy-eared, translucent-skinned elephant.

"Well shit," is all Callie says, too stunned to do much else. Because, really, she was expecting the mafia or a stalker or something, not... Whatever _this_ is...

Her exclamation has attracted the attention of the others, and they turn to her. The... _thing_ surveys her with strange eyes; wide and empty and black, with lids that swoop down across the pupils in a w-shape.

"Callie!" Polly chokes out around the hand on her throat. "Go! Get out of here!"

But Callie is being trained by S.H.I.E.L.D for situations exactly like this one, and she's not going anywhere. So she backs up a pace before flinging herself into the air and round house kicking the thing in the face.

It's so surprised that it drops Polly, the woman heaving for breath, Doc rushing over to her. Callie's landing is a smooth one, despite the fact that she's wearing relatively high shoes, and she's a bit proud of herself in that moment.

And then she looks at the thing again.

The area of impact is pulsing, an indent of her foot glaring out from the head in a pink shape, blues and purple light coursing around it. As she watches, the foot-shaped print balloons itself back into place and turns back to its normal color. The monster flares its nostrils at her menacingly before... _flicking_ something at her. It's almost like a tentacle, except the only feeler is on the very tip of it, and Callie only flips out of its way in enough time to miss being speared on the edge of it. It hits the door and shatters it under its weight.

Her brush with death is enough to rattle Callie momentarily, and she freezes until the Doc screams at her. " _Run_!"

She wants to take him up on that offer, but she also wants to stay and she doesn't know what to do. Before she can decide, however, a figure dressed in red swings through the shattered doors and kicks the creature in the face.

Spiderman.

The creature's head snaps back at an impossible angle before ricocheting back into place. Its mouth smirks at all of them.

"Things seem to be getting a bit crowded at the moment," it says, before turning to look back at a red-faced Doc who is helping his wife back to her feet. "I'll be back, Alexander."

A noxious, sulfur-smelling gas fills the air, making Callie's eyes water, and just like that, the creature- and Spiderman- are gone.

* * *

Callie gets sent to Florida.

There are bullshit excuses, of course, but they're just that: bullshit. "Dive training", "scuba certification", "extra credit hours", "interaction with marine animals". But Callie knows the real reason. She's seen too much, and Doc doesn't want her involved in whatever's going on with him and Spiderman and that... _thing._

 _("Why isn't Peter going?"_

 _"I already certified him over the summer."_

 _"Then why am I going to_ Florida _? Why can't we just do it at the docks? You could do it. You're a certified dive instructor."_

 _"The experience, Callie-"_

 _"This isn't about the experience!" she blurts out, knowing she's walking on thin ice but too frustrated to care. She deflates then, like she always does, and pulls unhappily at her newly-blonde hair. "This is about what I saw last night, isn't it?" she asks quietly. "You don't want me to be involved."_

 _Doc's jaw clenches and he gets to his feet, not looking at her, pushing the sleeves of his sweater up his hairy forearms. "No more questions," he tells her. "You're going. And that's final.")_

So she goes to Florida.

Callie is angry- understandably angry. This creature shows up at _her_ lab, and threatens _her_ boss, and then she's not allowed to figure out what the hell is going on?

Peter and Natasha and Coulson are angry, too. Mostly because Callie won't tell them why she's so upset, because it's kind of obvious the Suttwells don't want any one to know what's going on (except _Spiderman_ , of all people, _fucking annoying ass jerk wad)_ , and as frustrating as that is, she doesn't think they'd appreciate S.H.I.E.L.D. breathing down their necks. Also she doesn't know how Peter would react to the whole "probably-a-super-hero trying to kill our boss" thing this early in their friendship.

Tony is the only one she tells. He's all for her getting as far away from this mind fuck as she can (and Florida is on the other side of the country, after all), but he understands this need she has to throw herself into danger (because he has the exact same one), so he doesn't directly tell her his opinion and instead tries to cheer her up about the fact that she's getting a free vacation and earning credit hours for it at the same time.

So Callie packs up her old cheer bag with swimsuits, shorts, t-shirts and hoodies, grumpily accepts her plane ticket from Doc, says good bye to Scarlet, Natasha, Peter, and her weird, Gothic room mate, Lola, and boards her flight to Tampa, Florida, and the Georgia Aquarium Institute of Marine Animal Rehabilitation.

Callie has to admit. It's gorgeous here.

The Atlantic Ocean here is crystal clear in a way that it isn't in New York, and the way the Pacific Ocean isn't back in Malibu. The beaches are, ironically enough, sandy and white- not pebbly or yellow, like she's used to- and it's humid, too. Really, really humid. It doesn't do good things for Callie's hair. Neither does the salt, or the constant dampness of it.

There are dolphins at this facility, it turns out. It's where the Georgia Aquarium trains them and raises them before taking them to Atlanta. It's also where they find injured dolphins and sea lions and such in the wild and heals them before releasing them back. Callie finds she quite likes the otters. They're the cuddliest and the most fun to swim with. The sea lions are cool, too, even if they don't do much more than sleep and fight with each other for the best spots to sleep in. But the dolphins... They're something else.

They're smart. Like, scarily smart. Kind of like the whole thing with her first meeting JARVIS, Callie isn't quite sure how to deal with something more intelligent than her not being human.

Because they are. More intelligent than her, that is.

 _(She's coming up the steps from the beach after her second day of dive training when_ It _happens._

It _being the incident later referred to as "that one time Callie got her ass handed to her on a silver platter by a fucking dolphin"._

 _Or at least that's what Peter calls it when she tells him about it later. She's not very fond of the title._

 _But anyway._

 _Callie's just spent almost an entire day in the ocean, learning how to operate scuba gear and get certified as a lifeguard and all that great bullshittery. And she's been in a wet suit the entire time, too, and those things are_ fucking hot as hell _, and her hair is a mess and she really needs to stop cursing so damn much._

 _So yeah. She's tired and thirsty and so, so hungry, and she can't wait to get inside and grab the Panera the other marine biologists picked up for her, and_ get out of this damn wet suit-!

 _"Fuck it," she says, and peels the damn thing off right in front of the cuttlefish tank._

 _It's liberating, and if any of the marine biologists have a problem with Callie walking around their living room in a bikini, they don't mention it. In fact, one of them, Robert, the cute brown-haired one, seems to be staring at her legs an awful lot. She's caught him glancing at them a few times. Score one for Callie._

 _Hot marine biologists/ animal trainers aside, Callie decides she wants to eat dinner on the animal deck that night because hey, why not? She can see the beach and the sunset from there, and there are dolphins and shit and how many people can say they've eaten dinner with a dolphin?_

 _So she plops down right next to their tank and unboxes her tuna and kale salad, when something bumps her leg. She looks down to see Merlin, one of the older dolphins, nosing her bare thigh, and she'd swear the thing was_ grinning _at her. So she waves at it, a little confused, and looks down at the plate on her lap._

 _Only to find that it isn't there._

 _It's been stolen by Merlin's friend, Napoleon, while she wasn't looking.)_

The rest of the citizens of the center think the incident is hilarious, even though Merlin and Napoleon's caretaker, Crystal, isn't thrilled they've disrupted their diet, and Callie quickly finds herself becoming accepted into their tight-knit circle of friends.

She's enjoying Florida, and she's enjoying her new friends, and she's enjoying the beaches and the dive training and the otters and all of those other things... But she still can't get Spiderman out of her head, and she still can't get fighting out of her body.

She spends her days learning to dive and her nights running through flips and tricks and kicks in her bedroom. When she's glancing over shoulders at the marine lab, she's thinking of what that _thing_ in New York is and how it can be killed.

Callie is restless. Really, really restless.

And the night before she's set to return to NYC, Robert, cute, looks-at-her-legs-all-the-time Robert, notices that restlessness.

* * *

"So you finally lost your virginity?"

Callie's been back in New York for a week now, and in lieu of having only one female friend her own age (aka Gwen, who squealed when she was told over the phone the day after), she's telling Natasha at their first practice since Florida.

Callie nods even as she dodges a punch and rolls out of the way of a searching foot.

"Was it good?" Natasha adds. She's grinning in that God-you're-such-a-child way she has sometimes.

Callie resists the urge to smile back at her and flips back to her feet. "Not really," she admits. "It was kind of awkward after, to be honest."

Natasha shrugs a lithely muscled shoulder. "The first time always is. You'll be seducing and assassinating tyrants in no time."

 _I hope not,_ Callie wants to say, but she doesn't. Mostly because she thinks Natasha is just joking but she's not completely sure.

"Getting 'em while they're young, huh, Nat?"

A man has just walked into the gym. He's on the shorter side (shorter than Callie, really, which isn't that hard to do), with wiry, muscled arms, revealed by the workout t-shirt he's wearing. His hair is honeyed brown and cropped close on the sides, and there are smile lines around his eyes.

He grins at Callie and sticks his hand out for her to shake. "Clint Barton, alias Hawkeye. You're Callie Watson?"

"Um, yes?" Callie doesn't mean for that to come out as a question. She shakes his hand, a little timid.

"This is my partner," Natasha says. She looks like she's enjoying Callie's awkwardness more than she should be. "He'll be supervising your weapons training."

"Weapons training," Callie repeats. "What weapons training?"

* * *

Weapons training, it turns out, is a good deal harder than Callie thought it would be. Not that she thought she'd be _doing any weapons training_ , but still.

She's an okay shot. I mean, it's not like she's made any kill shots yet, but she'd have incapacitated the target, according to Clint. Callie's better with assault rifles than with pistols or machine guns- a problem if she ever wants to do spy work with S.H.I.E.L.D. She'll get better with practice, though, Clint says.

He's a good teacher. Quiet, observant, poking good-natured fun at her ineptness once in a while, but Callie doesn't mind. She likes Clint. He's fun, especially coupled with Natasha's dry humor and Callie's dirty mouth.

She'll be working with Clint a lot more, apparently. Callie doesn't mind. Neither does Clint. He likes her, too. So does Natasha, although she won't show it.

But as good as things are going with S.H.I.E.L.D., that doesn't change the fact that Spiderman is still very much at large in New York, and Callie still has no idea about what is going on with him and the Suttwells.

She gets another opportunity to find out soon enough, though.

Halloween finds her, Peter, Gwen, and Harry bar-hopping in the Meat Packing District using fake IDs procured from various sources. (Callie's is her S.H.I.E.L.D. one. Coulson will, most assuredly, murder her if he ever finds out what she's been using it for.) Callie is dressed as, ironically enough, a secret agent, Gwen a somewhat-sexy nurse, Peter a jock (it's a football jersey and jeans. Callie groans audibly when she sees him), and Harry a ninja.

Things are going reasonably well until around midnight, when a bomb goes off a block away from them and everyone panics.

A crowd starts rushing toward Callie and her friends, desperate to get away from the fire and the carnage, and she's separated from the others. She's swept _toward_ the disaster area, and she doesn't really mind because she was planning on doing that anyway, but she can hear a terrified and slightly drunk Gwen screaming her name, with Harry throwing a few in there for good measure.

"I'm here!" Callie tries to yell back, but it's swallowed in other desperate cries of fear and pain.

And then suddenly, she can see _him._

Well, them, really, because there are two important people that are now visible to her.

The first is the apparent perpetrator of the bomb blast, a lithe woman in a black outfit with long, silvery hair and a mask over her thin features.

The second is Spiderman.

Callie takes off running just as he secures the villainess in a gigantic spiderweb and the police arrive on the scene.

"Hey!" Callie shouts at the wannabe superhero, forcing herself to get past the screaming, crying civilians. _Don't look, don't look, don't look._ "Hey!"

Spiderman glances over his shoulder at her, then speeds up, springing from rooftop to rooftop at an almost impossible rate. But Callie hasn't been training with Natasha and Happy for months on end for nothing. She's an Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., damn it! She runs faster.

Because she _needs_ to find out who Spiderman is. _Needs_ to find out what his connection is with Suttwells so she can keep them safe. _Needs_ to find out if he is all good or only a little good and mostly bad so she can keep the rest of the city safe, because she's not going to let another Ivan Vanko or James Hammer or Obadiah Stane or Joker come to life right under her nose. She won't. She won't do it.

Callie skids to a stop in an alleyway. It's dark and smells weird and looks exactly like an alleyway from a horror movie or a bad detective show looks like. Her hand instinctively goes to the gun at her side that she's only newly licensed to carry.

And then Spiderman swings down in front of her face, clinging to a web like it's a bungee chord, and she almost screams.

Almost being the key word.

"Why?" Spiderman says, and he's not using that pseudo-macho voice he's been trying to pull off on her for the past few weeks. She thinks he sounds vaguely familiar. "Why do you keep trying to find me?"

Callie's breathless from the chase, but she pants out, "I need to know."

" _Why_?" Spiderman insists again. "Why do you want to be involved in this? It's dangerous and you're not-"

But Callie doesn't listen to what Spiderman thinks she is or isn't, because Callie is too busy reaching for his face while he's too busy talking to notice. She rips his mask off.

* * *

 **A/N: So, no Tony in this chapter. Or rather, only mentions of him, no screen time. Sorry for that, but everything in here really needed to get out before I could keep going with his story line. He probably won't be in the next chapter much, either, but you'll be seeing a lot of him very, very soon. Sorry for the delay in this chapter, I was a little busy, you know, graduating from high school and everything. But I really hope you enjoyed this, and if you did, don't be scared to drop a review down below! Thanks for reading!**


	14. Interlude 3: Steve

**Devil's Promise**  
 **Interlude 3: Steve**

* * *

 _ **November 5, 2013**_  
 _ **Central Park, New York, New York: Case 91876: Steve Rogers Revival Process: Clearance Level 9**_

* * *

Her name is Agent Sunday Kontis. She's twenty years old, a World War II professor, specializing in the Howling Commandos, a double-major in Psychology, and all she's ever wanted is to be a hero.

She's not very good at it. She has anemia, and measures about five-one if she stands on her tip-toes, she can't shoot to save her life, she gets knocked on her ass by even the worst of recruits during spars, and she knows for a fact that she will never, ever be able to kill someone.

But she has a photographic memory, knows everything there is to know about war tactics and old-time espionage, and as Coulson puts it: "We'd be fools to not have you on our payroll, Professor."

Her official title is "S.H.I.E.L.D. Historian", but in reality, she's more of an encyclopedia. Her job mostly involves running around, doing odd jobs for the real agents and blurting out whatever section of the handbook Coulson or May or Hill or Fury need for their paperwork. She gets moved around bases a lot, and sometimes she feels a bit like an annoyance Fury is forced to take care of, but as long as she's helping the good guys somehow, even if it's just the tiniest bit, she's happy.

Steve Rogers notices her. He's one of the very few that does.

Of course, she kind of made him notice her, what with being the first face he saw after he woke up. Although, what happened after makes him a little surprised she wants anything to do with him at all. He did flip a table, after all, and then shout at her like no woman should ever be shouted at, and then run out of the sound stage, probably earning her a strict talking-to by some higher-up on the S.H.I.E.L.D. hierarchy.

But she smiles at him when they pass each other in the halls, and she sits with him in the cafeteria if she sees him eating alone, and she helps him figure out the ridiculously high-tech coffee machine and shows him how to use an iPod.

They develop a sort of friendship. The kind that reminds him of his days touring the country, selling war bonds with a pack of gorgeous dancers who treated him like an awkward but well-meaning older brother. Only Sunday treats him more like a friend than a relative. She treats him like he sees her treat the other agents: kind and sweet and considerate. A bit like their own personal cheerleader (she's the one who tells him what that is and shows him modern football on television).

And for the first time, Fury notices her. He doesn't make it a big deal, but a few days after he sees them walking down the halls together, Steve grinning tentatively, Sunday receives a notification that she is now officially in charge of Captain Rogers' modern education.

She undertakes the task with joy, and Steve's mind spins most of the time with all the information she crams into it about the end of the war and the long-reaching repercussions and the socioeconomic implications of the fifties and sixties and everything that's happened between his old world and the cold, scary one he's living in now.

She tells him about Al Queida and 9-11 and the Greensboro Baptist Church and abortion, but she also tells him about Obama and Mother Theresa and One Direction and _Frozen_ and the internet and _To Kill a Mockingbird._

Months pass, and they spend more time with each other, and eventually the modern world seems a little less scary.

Their favorite spot is the _Alice_ statue in Central Park. There's a florist with a tiny little booth set up there, and Sunday loves peonies so the florist loves her, and they walk Scout, Sunday's dachshund, up and down that stretch of park every Saturday afternoon and talk about their week as if they haven't been together for most of it.

It's a Thursday night in early November when Sunday calls him out of the blue (and he's just now figured out how to use his high-tech, Stark Industries cell phone) and asks him to meet her there. He comes as quick as he can, and a concerned frown immediately grows on his face when he sees her sitting on a bench in front of the statue, bundled up in a tan pea-coat with a plaid scarf, hands clutched around a coffee cup and breath mingling with the cold, crisp air.

Steve hurries over to her and immediately asks, "What's wrong?"

Sunday bites her lip, looking up at him with those apologetic grey eyes of hers, cheeks rosy, the rest of her face very pale. "I've been reassigned," she tells him, shifting on the bench uncomfortably. "I'm moving to a base outside of D.C. the day after Christmas."

"Why?" is all Steve can think to say, because a life in the twenty-first-century without Professor Sunday Kontis is, in a word, unfathomable to him. She's become a constant in his life- the _only_ constant in his life right now. How is he going to function without her?

Sunday shifts, obviously uncomfortable, and Steve realizes it the same time she says it: "That's classified information. I'm sorry, Steve."

"There's nothing to be sorry about," he answers reflexively. "You got reassigned. You can't help that."

"I'll only be there for a year or so," she tries to offer helpfully, "and you know how to use a phone now, so we'll be able to talk."

He knows she's right, knows it's not like he's never going to see each other, knows he went longer with absolutely no word from Bucky during the war. But it still feels an awful lot like he's losing another person he cares about.

Instead he says this, "Come on. I'll walk you back to your apartment."


End file.
